Adam Radwanski is correct, the Liberals and NDP may be battling it out for who comes in second place in the total vote on election but if the NDP eats enough Liberal support the result is not an NDP Official Opposition it is a BQ one. For the NDP to gain official opposition status they have to win big in the Liberal stronghold of Toronto and the Conservatives have to turn around their fortunes in rural Quebec. I doubt either of those are going to happen at this point.
So says the guy from Political Staples.
Okay. Forget that its a long shot, what would be so horrible about the Bloc as official opposition, given that their separatist aspirations are out the window and they have simply become another regional party like the old Reform Party? I've always seen them as the Que. version of the NDP, with slightly more xenophobia from their rural wing. Presuming a minority gov., how bad could they be?
The Bloc were official opposition after the 1993 election and did a fine job.
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question:
ReplyDelete1. Every Question Period would start with a question pertaining to a specific 22% of the Canadian population.
2. It would most surely mean a Conservative majority.
I, and many others, would much rather that these two things did not become reality.
mississaugapeter, if the vote were split the way Radwanski suggests, regardless of who formed the official opposition, the opening question would represent about a quarter of the electorate.
ReplyDeleteLiberals must be terribly desperate. First whining about being the target of Conservative attacks, then going desperately negative themselves. Fear mongering to the extreme. Harper's "hidden agenda". There's nothing hidden. He's a neocon pragmatist. We got to openly see that btw, because the Liberals were an absent opposition that gave harper a de facto majority.
Then there's the Red Baiting and Layton's hidden "socialist" agenda. And now we could end up breaking up the country if the Bloc come up the middle.
Why can't we ever have an election decided on issues? Why do the Liberals never stick to their claim of taking the high road? Dion is a hypocrite. On Sunday says he'll run a clean campaign. On Monday goes shamelessly negative. The greatest shame is the gutter politics works: it works to get votes and it works to cheapen democracy. Thanks for contributing BCL.
On Monday goes shamelessly negative.
ReplyDeleteThere's that clarity of language we'll all come to appreciate in the post-modern era.
Give it a rest, hippie.