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The main problem with a two-party situation is that it's inherently polarizing.

I think that is pretty close to what I said, but in fewer words :)

The only way to differentiate yourself from the other party is to illustrate your differences, and to move further away from the other party

I would argue that the parties here haven't really moved that much further away from each other as much as they have moved further away from the center. The democrats have moved to right-of-center, and the republicans to very-very-very-very-extremely far right of center. I will also say this reflects pretty accurately on the collective lack of spine in the democratic party; they are willing to be abused by the republicans repeatedly and allow themselves to be bullied into this weak position.

Whereas, in real life, people don't automatically fall into the neat camp on one side or the other.

Politics generally makes a lot more sense on a 2-axis plot, but the US seems to want to keep placing things on this weird 1-axis plot. This does encourage grouping and polarization; the 2-party system tends to encourage that.

And the Liberal Party of Canada believes that firearms should be banned, and are busily deciding if outlawing handguns completely will solve the problem of 'illegal guns used in crimes.'

I am most definitely not an expert on Canadian politics. However when I look at the website for the Liberal party of Canada, their
gun policy proposal does not to me read as one that wants to take away or ban all handguns.

Sarnia. It seems the objection to the plant was due to pollution concerns, and does not match your characterisation. As to overall policy: http://cambridge.liberal.ca/bl... also does not match your characterisation (yes, I looked it up).

Political ideologies (conservative, liberal) are not parties

UM...
http://www.liberal.ca/ (The Liberal Party of Canada)
http://www.conservative.ca/ (The Conservative Party of Canada)

It is classically disingenuous, hypocritical and opportunistic for the Conservatives to declare the Liberals would not honour Kyoto.

The main obstacle to progress on Canada's carbon reduction is the Harper Conservative government's devotion to the vastly damaging oil sands projects, and its greedy cronies in Alberta. But lying and manipulation is what Conservatives do best.

An extraordinarily offensive advertising campaign is currently running in Canada defending this ecological disaster with photographs of beautiful wilderness.

Take action to change that!

http://www.liberal.ca/open/

The Liberal Open Government Initiative will:

        * Immediately restore the long-form census;
        * Make as many government datasets as possible available to the public online free of
            charge at opendata.gc.ca in an open and searchable format, starting with Statistics
            Canada data, including data from the long-form census;
        * Post all Access to Information requests, responses, and response times online at
            accesstoinformation.gc.ca; and
        * Make information on government grants, contributions and contracts available through
            a searchable, online database at accountablespending.gc.ca.

For complete details, please read the PDF policy brochure. http://lpc.ca/opengov

(Disclaimer, I work as a developper for the party)

Green Party of Canada

Or how about Liberal Party of Canada?

Seriously. The people behind the sponsorship scandal are gone, and they at least have a chance at winning.

How does that saying go? Something like "a vote for Green is a vote for the Conservatives"?

Let's get the Cons out, then worry about keeping the Libs in line. It shouldn't be hard to do after they saw how quickly and decisively we kicked their asses over AdScam.

Did this happen because I voted Conservative? Or, put another way, would this have happened if the Liberals were in power?

The liberals stated their support of net neutrality earlier in the year.

and, of course, everyone everywhere is either a liberal or a (spit) conservative

Note for those unaware: It's not just a random label thrown about in canada to polarize issues, the current government is headed by the Progressive Conservative party. And the current opposition are the Liberals.

Well, well, well...

The Liberals are neck-and-neck with the Conservatives in the polls and are looking for an issue to galvanize the elusive 18-35 year old citizens into voting.

If only there was something contentious, like making it illegal to copy legally purchased materials or record TV. Something like "You could go to jail or face $20,000 for owning a modded XBox." Telling young professionals that content will be decided not by the CRTC, but by cable providers and American lobby groups. If you buy a DVD for your kids and let them use a ripped copy to skip the ads and keep the copy clean, that's a violation of WIPO, which could jail you and bankrupt you. Using any operating system that bypasses security features would do the same, too.

If only there was a way to contact your local Liberal, Bloq, and NDP MPs and let them know how you, as a citizen and registered voter, think this is worth an election.

Imagine the ads:
Have a guy walking down the street, listening to an MP3 player. A van pulls up next to him, and RCMP with guns order him to the ground. One policeman grabs the player, looks through it, says, "full of mp3s" to another one. They arrest him and put him in the van.

Announcer: "This is the Conservative plan for copyright reform."

The "liberal" in "Liberal Party" has the traditional American meaning and is not used in the European sense. In Europe, a "liberal" is one who favors market liberalization: lower taxes, less regulation, and longer work hours. For example, France's Nicolas Sarkozy was accused of being a "liberal" when he ran in the presidential election.

Never mind that the GOP considers Canadian conservatives to be too liberal for their taste.

I often see this sort of comparison between political parties in different countries. There is some merit to the comparison, but I think it's important to take into account that successful political parties don't set their platform based on pure ideology, but they also take into account the current status quo. Thus since Canada has more social programs than the US, it is natural to expect that mainstream Canadian political parties appear to the left of those in the US. If in some strange situation the GOP were to try to expand into Canada, I would expect them to have a platform much closer to the Canadian mainstream than their policies in the US.

Well first off as it's presented it's taking from corporations on one hand and giving it back as personal tax cuts.. basically raising corporate taxes via the back door. Who will end up paying for the higher corporate taxes? The consumers.

The Liberals don't talk about it a lot, but if you look at page 4 of their costing document, you'll note that under the Green Shift column, they have $8.5 billion in corporate tax cuts. The $1.2 billion corporate tax increase in the "Tax Changes" column appears to come from the ending of oil sands tax subsidies.

As for passing costs on to the consumer, this is to be expected to some extent. Where economically sound, companies will reduce energy consumption to reduce costs from the carbon tax. Otherwise they will in many cases pass the cost on to the consumer. This in turn discourages consumption of products that require emitting a lot of greenhouse gases in order to produce. The very progressive personal income tax cuts are intended to offset the increased costs felt by the consumer.

What happens if you can't afford to make the needed improvements?

The EnerGuide for Houses program was started by the previous Liberal government, canceled by the Conservatives, then relaunched under a new name, ecoENERGY Retrofit. It provides up to $5000 for homeowners who retrofit their homes to save energy. It looks like the current Liberal platform doubles that amount. The platform also includes interest-free "Green Mortgage" loans of up to $10k for what looks like the same sort of retrofits.

The lobbying efforts of these various content industries are going to continue regardless of which party is in power. Take the time to write your MP, and CC each of the major political parties as well:

http://www.conservative.ca/EN/1045/
http://www.liberal.ca/contact_e.aspx
http://www.ndp.ca/contact
http://www.green.ca/en/contact

Make it known that Canadians will not support any government pandering to the one-sided arguments of content publishers. DRM is doomed to failure and propping it up with legislation is just another step towards criminalizing fair-use.

Here in Canada, we actually have four parties currently represented in Parliament. This is down from the five that were there before (two parties merged; nobody got destroyed at the polls).

However, since Confederation, the Prime Minister has been the leader of either the Conservative or Liberal/Whig party. There are other parties, and they do hold seats, but none of them have ever formed the federal government. However, some have won provincial elections.

Handy links:

• Conservative Party of Canada
• Liberal Party of Canada
• New Democratic Party of Canada
• Bloc Québéois
• Green Party of Canada (never elected any members to Parliament, but tends to get a fair number of votes at the polls)

The big problem with the current machines is that they combine both those steps & don't provide any means of independent public oversight.

Nail, meet hammer. Right on the head.

A great deal of the problem with American vote counting, as opposed to Canadian, is that, as another reply stated, with a two-party system, the second party doesn't really care if the first party gets knocked off this time around. Their position is just about as powerful; their 'leader' just doesn't get to sit in the big comfy chair and hold the remote.

In Canada, by contrast, we have the following parties:

1. The Liberals . This party has been in power the most often. They are fiscally conservative, socially progressive, and quite corrupt. They are currently without a real leader.
2. The Conservatives , formerly the Progressive Conservatives, briefly the Reform Party, even more briefly the (conservative) Alliance. One of Canada's two original parties, the Progressive Conservatives were almost completely destroyed by their own leader's unpopularity in 1992. The new Conservative party is fically conservative, socially regressive, quite corrupt, and generally whacko. Their current leader is the head whacko.
3. The New Democratic Party . Canada's semi-socialist party, fiscally socialist, socially very progressive. At the height of their popularity in the 1980s, they became known as "the conscience of the Commons". Unfortunately, when their leader retired, they lost their direction and their credibility. Their current leader is a posturing buffoon. The NDP currently holds the balance of power in Ottawa. They've never held enough seats to become corrupt.
4. Le Bloc Quebecois . One of the parties that formed following the destruction of the Progressive Conservatives, the Bloc's sole mission is to separate Quebec from the rest of Canada. They have only fielded candidates in Quebec.
5. The fringe parties. The Communist Party, the Green Party, the Marijuana Party, the Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party... we've got 'em all. Full list here.
6. The Rhinoceros Party . This party disbanded after its original leader died, but it is worth noting for being the most popular 'joke' party in Canada's history. Although they never held a seat, they received numerous votes from disgruntled voters for policies like the following:
   • putting the national debt on Visa
   • turning the Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine tunnel in Montreal into a free carwash by poking holes in the ceiling
   • switching Canada to driving on the left side of the road to be more like England (and therefore less like the USA), but making the transition gradual: trucks and buses first.

For those puzzled, RMS's Liberal comment is in reference to Canada's Liberal party.

Correction. Liza is a liberal and the liberals are in power in Canada (minority government though).

References:

http://www.liberal.ca/bio_e.aspx?&id=24024
http://pm.gc.ca/eng/bio.asp?id=13

Same here in Canada, except our Liberal party's orientation occasionally varies wildly by party leader and member. Lately their policy seems to be to preach the left-wing NDP's platform, only less convincingly, and then promptly implement the right-wing Conservative platform, only less competently. Most Canadians see this as balancing out into being centrist, which is what the Liberals claim to be.
I'm represented by Liberals at the provincial and federal levels. The former loudly proclaimed during an all-candidates meeting that homosexual relationships are an "affront to God." The latter promised to champion against pro-choice bills, no matter what party policy might dictate.

Which is also pretty much the form response I received (~two months later) from Minister Scherrer's office irt to an Email I sent back when she said, " 'As minister of Canadian Heritage, I will, as quickly as possible, make changes to our copyright law.'".

Bah! Spouting off slogans isn't an answer!

Especially in the capacity as Civil Servent.

liberals--;

Also wanted to add that I was pleasantly suprised to find the site running PHP and Apache, rather than IIS and ASP.NET, like the Liberals and Conservatives. The NDP appear to use some sort of content management system, with most of the site being static, the server reports Apache with PHP installed.

I followed this case quite closely. Despite our highest court ruling in favour of Monsanto, all it would take is this to become an issue in our upcoming federal election (will be called this Sunday), and our patent law will be changed. Once the law is changed, the Monsanto case's precedent will be tossed aside, and we will get back on the right track.

Our (Canada's) patent law is quite out of date, it does not address the issues regarding patenting of genome, plants, organisms, and other living matter. Once it is brought up to date (not when, it would be political suicide for all parties not to protect farmers like Schmeiser), we will get things right.

All parties which are running in every riding have to deal with this the correct way.

- The new Conservative Party of Canada will stand to loose grassroots support if they do not protect the rights of farmers to save seed. Although I wouldn't vote for them because they have yet to release their platform... shuuush... they don't want people to know that yet.

- The Liberal Party of Canada will stand to loose support in Ontario where Schmeiser was situated, although it is slipping because the provincial government did a 180 in the first budget.

- The NDP hates GE food, says there is no viable market for the stuff, it should be labelled, etc etc. They would definitely protect the rights of the farmer to save the seed.

- And the Green Party. This is a given, they don't like GE foods, they don't like GE anything, because it destroys biodiversity.

This is just a temporary setback. The justices here did not fully comprehend the severity of their decision, but they were forced to work within the framework of the laws given to them by Parliament in 1985. Things have changed, and this act of Parliament will be apart of our next election, and will be dealt with the next government.

As Canada's former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau once said while explaining his becoming the leader of the Liberal party, "If you can't beat 'em, join em!"

Yeah, and those left-wing pinkos have a LIBERAL government! It's right there in the title "Liberal Party of Canada"! They don't even deny it, much less try to hide it, as any sane people should.

And right on our continent, too! How can we allow this to stand?

Move the whole thing to Canada.

Seriously now. You want Howard Dean? We've got a party full of them. We just keep electing them, and we can't stop ourselves.

The Patriot Party of Canada is a good new party. The progressives are out there, and not all waffles like the NDP or republican-imitators like the Alliance. Hell, technically, the PC Party is still around, albeit dying... you could say the same for Paul Hellyer's Party.

No... you're right... only the Liberal's are around.

I'm Canadian, and I know there are lot of Canadians who also share the same ignorance/lack of information on how our Canadian government works but I hope this helps:

The Canadian Alliance is the "Opposition party" or the group of elected individuals in our House of Commons (sorta like the House of Representatives in the states). The difference in our elected officials is that we have more than just two large parties. There's the Liberal Party of Canada, NDP, PC Party of Canada and other parties like the Green Party, The Communist party, etc. (I don't have their URLs, but I'm sure google would help)

To better understand Canadian government, check this out: Structure of the Government of Canada

The Minister of Canadian Heritage is this person named Sheila Copps who is in charge of keeping Canadian Culture 'Canadian'. A lot of people don't like what she does as a lot of times it removes freedoms from the people of Canada and makes things more expensive (our taxes pay for her position and her policies/ideas).

To answer your actual question: Is this one individual overruling a lobbying type group or a governmental group?
The bill became law despite the Canadian Alliance fighting against it.

In Canada, national elections are handled by a nonpartisan Federal agency, Elections Canada. Everyone across the country gets the same kind of ballot, a simple card with circles beside the names where you make your "X". No punch cards, machines, or other fancy things that can go wrong or confuse people into voting for Pat Buchanan. It's only a coincidence that the same party keeps winning elections. I swear!

If you want electronic voting, the best idea is probably the system used by the City of Toronto in last fall's mayoral elections -- the ballots were paper, but the counting was electronic. To vote, you filled in a region beside a candidate's name, much like those computerized multiple choice tests. All the counting was done 1 hour after polls closed, and they still had paper records to verify the results.

are you saying that Canada has a communist government?

Well, at least it's a one party state. However, regardless of any open source movement in "leftist" Canada, it should be pointed out that about five years ago, the Canadian government signed a contract to use Microsoft Office exclusively, thereby screwing Ottawa-based Corel.

US citizen trying to get the hang of all these darn parties while I wait for Immigration to let me the heck in.

Here's all you need to know:

Liberals (or "Grits") - The centrist ruling party.
Progressive Conservatives (or "Tories) - Traditional right-of-centre alternative to the Liberals, until a decade ago when its support splintered.
New Democratic Party - Traditional "third party", left-of-centre, have never formed a government.
Canadian Alliance - Formed in 1987 as the "Reform party", a Western party that split from the Tories. Currently involved in a fratricidal leadership controversy; likely to disintegrate before the next election.
Bloc Quebecois - A Quebec-based party that split largely from the Tories. They run candidates only in Quebec and campaign solely on Quebec independence.

Of course we also have the usual fringe parties - the Marijuana party, the Communist party, the Green party, and so on. My favourite is the Natural Law party, whose basic policy is to teach Canadians to levitate using Yoga.

Right.

Speaking of all the election hype, I feel compelled to throw in my $0.02 on the upcoming elections for us neighbors in Canada..
Since I'm generally (by choice) uninformed about American politics, I only take interest in the subject purely for entertainment value.
Equally entertaining is that of Canadian politics, which from my personal observation, us Canadians take more of a humouristic look..
The next Federal Election is Nov 27, 2000, and our candidates have given us a few more boxes on the ballot to check (or spoil) :)

So, for those Slashdotters interested, here's some nifty links I've come across for some more comic relief

Elections Canada
Some Logos
Parties
Liberal Party
PC Party
NDP
Canadian Alliance
Marijuana Party
Bloc Quebecois
Government of Canada

So I don't really get the beef people have with them. Of course Canada doesn't have any DMCA but I am sure if you give Jean some time he'll come up with legislation that will make the DMCA look like a walk in park.

I mean we can't see english signs in quebec, french in Sault Ste Marie, so why should we have the freedom of using the net freely? You sure @home isn't run by Canadians?

Know what that means? Choice! That's right... I can't just flip a coin, because there are SOOO many choices to make! Yessir... I can vote Liberal, and keep our international code-of-conduct FUBARing Frenchman Jean Chretien. Or, maybe I'll go for the new kid on the block, Stockwell Day and his Canadian Alliance just to piss both the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives off. Oh yeah... I could vote PC... but that'd be sort of like picking the slow nerdy kid with asthma for your soccer team - you'd do it just to make him feel good. I could shore up the New Democratic Party, who are rumoured to possibly cease to exist as a federal party after this election, but Lord knows I didn't care for Bob Rae. I can't even keep him straight with Preston Manning.

So yes, as a Proud Canadian with an upcoming election, I Have Choice! Too bad... finding the lesser of 2 evils is a lot easier than finding the lesser of 5. I wonder if the Natural Law Party will be running again. I still have to see a flying yogi.