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Canada Election Result Bad News For DMCA Opponents
An anonymous reader writes "For those with a stake in the opposition of Jim Prentice's C-61, the Canadian DMCA, this previous week's election results will be displeasing. The Conservative Party, which promised to reintroduce the DMCA if elected, gained 19 seats this election, mostly at the expense of the flagging liberal party, a mere 12 short of a majority government. The increase in Conservative representation, as well as the relatively low profile of this issue amidst other, more pressing concerns, increases the likelihood that the son of C-61 will come to fruition. On a positive note, the number of MPs supporting Geist's copyright pledge has increased to 34. Given the Conservative Party's historic disregard of public opinion, however, the efforts of the copyright-pledge MPs will have to rally the full opposition across three major parties in order to defeat the bill. A mere 12 MPs now stand between the Canadian public and the MAFIAA's hungry maw."
Very few outside of geeks care about the DMCA.
The real problem here is the system. Let's take a look at the ratios between the percentage of seats each party got in the election, and their percentage of the national popular vote:
Conservative
Seats: 143/308
Popular Vote: 37.63%
Ratio: 2.03 (More than twice the seats they would have obtained under a 100% proportional system.)
Liberal
Seats: 76/308
Popular Vote: 26.24%
Ratio: 0.94
BLOC Quebecois
Seats: 50/308
Popular Vote: 9.97%
Ratio: 1.63 (Interesting thing here; because voters in Quebec will vote the BLOC in much more often, they're skewed way above other parties even though they're practically running only in Quebec.)
NDP
Seats: 37/308
Popular Vote: 18.20%
Ratio: 0.66 (Screwed once again.)
Independent
Seats: 2/308
Popular Vote: 0.65
Ratio: 0.999 (Oddly proportional.)
Green
Seats: 0/308
Popular Vote: 6.80%
Ratio: 0.0 (Yeah. 6.8% of the vote, 0% of the representation. Good stuff.)
(Source: CBC.ca Election Results)
We could have even fixed this (at least in the Ontario Legislature) if we'd voted in MMP a year ago, rather than stayed with the skewed first past the post system. Unfortunately, I don't think enough people were educated about what the new system would mean and saw it as some sort of radical change, and so voted to stay with the current system.
Note: I think my math is accurate here but feel free to correct me.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Put your circumvention devices down and put your hands above your head!
The RIAA
" Given the Conservative Party's historic disregard of public opinion"
And give Slashdot's historic disregard of non-bias, I think we're tied.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Your anti-Harper rhetoric is a bit lame. And you don't know much about how the Canadian Parliament works.
Given the Conservative Party's historic disregard of public opinion, however, the efforts of the copyright-pledge MPs will have to rally the full opposition across three major parties in order to defeat the bill.
Not at all. On little bills like this, Members of Parliament normally vote the way their party leader tells them to (or else).
So, if Harper tells his party to vote in favour of the legislation, since the Conservative party has a minority, it comes down to what the other leaders, Stephan Dion (Liberal party), Jack Layton (New Democratic party), and Gilles Duceppe (Bloc Quebecois) tell their party members to do.
I managed to talk to someone working for the conservative party this summer, he was a roomate in fact (uOttawa!). Anyways, the point of the legislation is to literally 1) make legislation because that is what they do and 2) hopefully not piss off any big foreign business for some ostie of a reason. They pretty much say don't worry because we wont go after the little guy but then we already have existing anti-piracy laws that work quite fine for the real trouble makers. They then say that we need to modernize the existing laws because they talk about cassette tapes. Well that's fine but there's no way law can keep up fast enough with technology. IMO the conservative party should slim the laws rather than bloat them. In canada at least, the conservative parties are known for talking about "streamlining" laws and regulations and removing the bloat.
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
That is, they got less than 50% of the vote. This means it will still be hard for them to push their agenda.
I for one, am mildly relieved. For now.
The previous minority LIBERAL government had a copyright reform bill C-60 that failed as their government fell. It doesn't matter which party gets in they will try to ram through a copyright reform bill that conforms to what the industry pundits and the United States considers proper.
The real problem I have is that, at the moment we are paying a surtax on media that's meant to offset the loss in income due to copies made under our current "lax" copyright law. If the law is tightened up and allows for easier recovery by the industry through the courts then we should eliminate the surtax.
I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that we'll end up suffering under tougher laws and higher surtaxes as well.
A mere 12 MPs now stand between the Canadian public and the MAFIAA's hungry maw
where does the article say that *ALL* conservatives are would vote for this and *all* NDP, Bloc, Green and Liberals would vote against ?
increases the likelihood that the son of C-61 will come to fruition
While it *may* indeed be horrible for DMCA opponents if/when it's drafted, this awful bill doesn't even exist yet and there's been no indication it's on the docket in the near future.
... Given the Conservative Party's historic disregard of public opinion ...
disregard of public opinion on what? DMCA? The economy? the environment? I'm a conservative, a canadian, AND I agree with and suport fair copyright - but c'mon ... this aritlce kinda sounds like flaimbait to me ...
Canadian citizens have much higher expectations of privacy than U.S. citizens do. Our privacy laws reflect this. However, if a U.S. style DMCA law were to be enacted it would lead to CRIA, etc. throwing a lot of their muscle around trying to get ISP's to divulge information that most Canadians would not approve of being shared. The conservatives would be scandalized by this, and I think they know it.
Prentice, in some circles, is regarded to be an unusually savvy politician. However, he was given the job of keeping both Canadian citizens *and* american media conglomerates happy. He was screwed, and he knew it. He drafted a law to avoid another chorus of "Blame Canada" from the U.S., but his party never tried to ram it through the HoC like they would with a bill they actually care about. In fact, the timing of when it was tabled seems to suggest that they wanted it to be cut off by the election rather than being passed.
Now, obviously, the Conservatives didn't want this bill making them look like a bunch of Bush sycophants right when Harper was trying to distance himself from that sort of accusation. (The liberals accuse Harper of being a Bush groupie on a weekly basis. It's like clockwork.)
So... What happens now? The conservatives might plan to ram unpopular legislation through ASAP and hope it's forgotten by the next election. However, I think they realize that the embarrassment C-61 (or it's successor) is going to cause will be an ongoing thing. By passing C-61, they grant power to CRIA to embarrass them with U.S.-style frivolous lawsuits at will. If CRIA were so inclined, they could deliberately wait for the next election and then turn courtroom cowboy.
Are the conservatives dumb enough to hand a foreign interest the power to embarrass their party whenever they feel like it? I tend to doubt it. It's more likely that C-61 will be amended, diddled, massaged, and ultimately only talked about just enough to keep the "Blame Canada" shouts to a manageable level. Either that, or severely castrated into a law approaching sensibility, if such a thing is possible.
The consequences of first-past-the-post is that the most powerful party gets even MORE power, while less powerful parties get less than they deserve (analogy of making the rich richer and the poor poorer).
The irony is that only the most powerful party at any given time would be able to change this undemocratic reality, and shift to proportional representation. But obviously, they don't want to, because that'll reduce their power. It's the opposition which always supports changing FPTP to proportional (which will increase their power). But lo and behold, as soon as the opposition becomes the primary party, they immediately go to the start of the paragraph and realize they don't want the change anymore. Now, the former power holders want to change, but they no longer have the power.
The only party who can change the system, don't want to change it, and those that want to change it, can't. This statement will hold true regardless of which party is in power.
Beautiful irony, isn't it?
Your system seems to be much better than the one we have in Brazil, where the results are computed for the whole state, instead of by district.
The result of a proportional voting system is that *every* special interest politician is elected. We have dozens of representatives elected by different churches, and they all vote in a block on religious issues. We have dozens of trade union representatives. We have the "ruralist bench", representatives elected on farming issues. We have representatives for individual *issues*, rather than for the population as a whole.
As they say, politics make strange bedfellows, and when everyone represents a very narrow special interest, the strangest laws get approved by the congress in Brazil, no wonder this is a "third world" country...
The district voting that's used in Western Europe and North America seems to be a much better system, although it magnifies small differences in the popular vote. It's better to have 70% of the representatives elected by 50% of the people than to have 70% of the representatives each elected by a very small slice of the population.
.
In a parliamentary system, party discipline is strong.
In a minority government you do not undermine the unity of your party and you do not work behind the leader's back.
Unless you are prepared to face an artic chill from the party regulars that amount of global warming will ever touch.
Conservatives have NOT been in control of the USA for the last eight years..
Consider this:
A majority can do anything, even if they only have just >50 of the seats.
A riding only needs 50.000...1 percent of the vote.
That means that an ideal positioned 24% (155/308*0.5) could rule the country (presuming 100% voter turn out and no spliting the vote; could be signigicantly lower).
Why is it that the story capitalizes the C in Conservative, but not the L in Liberal?
Our conservatives != your conservatives.
See lament for a nation
Book info (amazon)
http://www.amazon.ca/Lament-nation-defeat-Canadian-nationalism/dp/0886292573
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lament_for_a_Nation:_The_Defeat_of_Canadian_Nationalism
Lament for a Nation is a 1965 essay of political philosophy by Canadian philosopher George Grant. The essay examined the political fate of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker's Progressive Conservative government in light of its refusal to allow nuclear arms on Canadian soil, and the Liberal party's political acceptance of the warheads.
Although grounded in the particular examination of Diefenbaker's fate in the 1963 federal election, the analysis transcended Canadian politics, studying Canadian and American national foundations, Conservatism in Britain and North America, Canada's dual nature as a French and English nation, the fate of Western Enlightenment, and the philosophical analysis of citizenship in modern democracies.
Content
According to Grant, Diefenbaker's position against the Bomarc was defeated by the Central Canadian establishment, who conspired with the Liberal Party to bring down Diefenbaker and diminish Canadian sovereignty. This was his lament; he felt there was an emerging Americanization of Canadians and Canadian culture due to the inability of Canadian to live their lives outside of the hegemony of American liberal capitalism - and the technology that emanates from that system.
Critical reception
Described as one of the seminal works of Canadian political thought, it discusses the influence of the United States via liberalism and technology on Canada - which Grant argued was traditionally a less-liberal and more traditionally conservative entity and culture. Grant argued that Canada was doomed as a nation as was illustrated by the 1963 Bomarc Missile Program crisis. He predicted the end of Canadian nationalism, which for Grant meant a small-town, populist conception of Canada as a British North American alternative to American capitalism and empire, and a move towards continentalism.
The problem is a perceived lack of options. The Liberal party has been in power the majority of the time since confederation but they've been plagued by scandals and weak leadership in recent years so their poll numbers are flagging. The NDP and Green parties picked up votes from the Liberals and in some cases split ridings which handed them to the Conservatives (another issue with FPTP). I've said it for nearly 3 years now but the Conservatives aren't popular, it's just the Liberals are unpopular and the Cons are seem by many as the only other party worth voting for. We're not a two party system but we're close.
Well, it has never been successfully tested.
The voting system we have in Brazil isn't totally proportional, but still it raises more problems than it solves. Each party must have a minimum percentage of the vote to elect representatives. The total vote for the party is computed, a candidate for a popular party needs less votes to get elected.
A sad example of how this, very complex, voting system works is that this clown got elected and got three other representatives in his party elected when he ran as a "protest" candidate, i.e. people voted for him because they thought no one was a worthy candidate. His motto was "my name is Eneas" and his main political project was that Brazil should detonate the nuclear weapon that reportedly was developed here in the early 1980s.
Where the frell is that None of the Above option? Politicians would cower at the thought, but really every voting system should have that option. If "None of the Above" wins, you either start over or let the seat go unfilled -- I prefer the latter, as it would be a direct wonderful way for the people to trim down the size of government directly.
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
I think all parties will concentrate on the economic mess for a while (not that there's really anything they can do about it.)
Depends on what you mean by "conservatives". Arguably, practically every member of both parties could be considered to be "conservatives" depending on your definition (social conservative (almost certainly), economic conservative (debatable), fiscal conservative (yeah right), etc.).
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
In my opinion, the far more elegant system is single transferable vote. BC is considering adopting it provincially.
"Conservatives" in control of the USA? I don't think so. Those are "Neocons" who've run up the largest deficit in US history and are practically socializing the nation's banks. The Bushites are about as "conservative" as the Communist Party.
Well, thirty-six percent of the country does. The rest think we should do anything but.
spoken like a man who knows zero about real politics. get away from the idiot box for a couple hours and take the time to read. you'll learn more in an hour than you will in a year from listening to talking heads on cnn or msnbc.
not to mention that your version of liberals have had a ton of pull in the legislature in the past few years but oddly enough it was the same time that things really started to tank.
things that make you go hmmm....
oh, that's right. the president is the only one who matters when it suits your needs. your among the ilk who think that obama will take office and whatever you think has gone wrong since clinton will magically disappear. the sun will come out and wages will go up the second obama sits his ass in that chair. keep living in your fantasy land all you want but please stop voting, you're part of the problem for thinking dumb shit like that.
yawn
I disagree with the others who say our Conservatives are different(I am Canadian). They share the same ideology (Pro Corporation, anti-socialism) and Harper seems to share the same mean spirited mud slinging personality as many republicans.
How they won is related to vote splitting and a weak Liberal leader. We have 1 right wing party, and 4 on the center left splitting the vote. Over 60% voted against the current government. But vote splitting gave them a government.
The green party is essentially the "Ralph Nader party" They elect no members and siphon off enough center/left votes to give yet more seats to the Conservatives. Idealistic people voting their idealism and giving the worse case result in reality.
if the canucks really want to challenge C-16 the way to do it is to propagate a moratorium on the purchase of all music, CDs and DVDs. You'll never hit any of those clowns except by hitting them in their wallets; money is all they care about, and the pols too.
Of course I predict the canucks will be no more noble or brave in this matter than are their lazier brethren to their south. It's the way of things until the sweeping change comes.
If anyone actually pays attention (and on /., I have my doubts..), you'll recall it was the Liberals that introduced C-60, the previous attempt at reforming our copyright laws which wasn't any better (some would say worse) than C-61.
And given that the Liberals and Conservatives (and their respective predecessors) are the only parties which have ever formed a national government in Canada..
Make no mistake about it, C-61 is fundamentally flawed (although it wouldn't take significant changes to make it acceptable).. but I think we must hold out hope that any party leading a minority government wouldn't be so foolish as to pass such consumer-hostile legislation.
I am the maverick of Slashdot
Yes, the Conservatives did promise to reintroduce the copyright "reform" legislation. This will be the third attempt at it by the Conservatives.
As for the elections themselves, there are many interesting observations. Read my thoughts on Canada's federal elections 2008.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
You do realize the "conservative" in "conservatism" doesn't refer to fiscal policy, but to maintaining currently established institutions? Yes, the banking system is an important national institution. Bailing them out was trivially conservative.
See title.
Now please go back to your provincial life, hating and stepping upon the freedom of other individuals because you think your limited morality should apply to them.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
In this discussion, "Liberal" and "Conservative" are not political positions but the names of specific Canadian parties which, it turns out, have quite involved histories. As in most parliamentary systems. their political positions are more nuanced than you may appreciate if you don't follow the parties closely. I have a similar problem when trying to follow politics in the UK or Australia.
The weird stuff that happens in American politics is something else entirely. Its history both as a republic and of slavery creates some unique attitudes toward freedom that you just don't find anywhere else in the world. Add to that the deepest sorts of influence of corporations on public policy, plus the rise of religious fundamentalism and corresponding hostility toward reasoned discourse, plus a culture of excess, and you have all the necessary ingredients for rampant mismanagement.
It's not that I think there is something wrong with the American people. They're good people, as decent as any you'll find anywhere. Yet I don't think it's conceivable that another country would find itself going down the same path.
It would be reasonable to assume that Canada is different from the US in significant ways. Lots that's wrong here, no doubt, but not for the same reasons.
Parity: What to do when the weekend comes.
An anonymous liberal reader writes ...
Let me know when slashdot governs you.
Tied? We'll be tied when you have to live shoulder to shoulder with the people your party disenfranchises every minute of every day.
Viva the police state.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Considering that France's Sarkozy is heavily pushing for a "3 strike and you're out" right now, and that Quebecois may be influenced by french culture, is it a safe bet to assume that MPs from Quebec would be more hawkish w.r.t. copyright legislation than the other Canadian MPs?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
you didn't know slashdot was a gang of flaming leftist fags? are you new around here?
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=998841&cid=25410251
So your from england. How do you know that they are being biased? The conservatives do have a disregard of public opinion because they skew to the smaller rural areas. All the cities are liberal and ndp. Popular vote was NOT won by conservatives. You are complaing for slashdot calling a spade a spade. Like creationism, not all sides are created equal and deserve equal levels of non bias.
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Slashdot is so whiney... LMAO
I don't think you understand how Canadian politics works
Since he is from Canada I doubt that more than I believe the whole of your post.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Over 60% voted against the current gov't, but even more voted against each other party (on it's own). Not to mention a western Canada Conservative landslide. Times are changing in Canada, and we want to have our cake, and eat it too. Lower taxes and still have the benefits? Could be possible :)
But I do have to agree with an aforementioned statement that we love our privacy, and they can pass any bill they want on DMCA, but as soon as people start demanding info from our ISP's, there would be hell to pay. I think this bill represents more a compliance with the complaints of the US that Canada is a bed of copyright piracy, and has little chance of changing much even if actually enacted.
The president may still be a Republican, but Democrats control the house and senate and have done for four years now (the period between elections) - they are the ones who are in control at the moment...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
In Calgary, Jim's home town, the average was 1/2 of registered voters actually came out to vote. I live in Prentice's riding... The NDP and Green both had about 7400 votes for 15% each. Jim had 27000 for 56%. Note the overall turn out as 57% in the riding and in Calgary was about 50%.
When people don't get out and vote, can't complain much.
So
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
The votes are held within partitions C, L, B, N, I. On any particular bill, if card(Yea) > card(Nay), it becomes law. It is a minority situation, so to pass a law, it must be C + select* [L, B, N]; which is exactly the situation with the "Old government of Canada" (which, ironically called itself the "New government of Canada"). 'I' doesn't count because card(I) = 2.
The "newest government of Canada" is as lame as the "New government of Canada" was; nothing changed, except every party leader will be gone before the next election because of said lameness......
She's absolutely correct. I'll support her argument with one from the UK, where the House of Lords is in essentially the same situation as the Canadian Senate, see: The 'Democratic' Option by Lord Norton.
An un-elected upper chamber (Senate or House of Lords in a bicameral system) is a check on power. The idea is to stop stupid legislation, like Secret Inquests, for example. Or, more importantly, use their expertise to help government get legislation right the first time.
However, an elected upper chamber will rightly want the power to create legislation themselves. This is the biggest issue with such a system: dilution of accountability.
What this means: currently, when things go wrong federally, we all look at the House of Commons. But with an elected Senate, it is not clear who is to blame for creating or supporting a piece of legislation.* We already have to think in terms of Provincial vs. Federal, imagine what politics will be like when it's Provincial vs. Federal vs. Senate.
The next issue: lack of debate. An elected upper chamber gives us two elected chambers, with no substantial differences between the them. Like local councils (in Britain, I forget what they're called in Canada: municiple govt. perhaps?) people don't vote for the best candidate, they vote for whatever party they're voting for nationally. So the Senate becomes the same as the Commons, and in this case, who is there to stop the stupid legislation? What's the point in having a bicameral legislature, if they're both the same. They may as well be re-factored (to use coding parlance) into one house, but then the check-and-balance of an upper chamber is lost.
The last, but still important, issue: lack of representation. No seriously, as Lord Norton puts it: 'people vote for white haired, middle-aged men.' Typically the ones with enough cash to mount FUD campaigns against their opponents. Women, ethnic minorities, even average people are under-represented in our legislature. The political system is filling with career politicians, with little-to-no experience of real life, and this is reflected in the quality of legislation. An elected upper-chamber will only make this worse.
Side-note: what is meant by 'average people' are IT workers, plumbers, electricians, doctors & nurses, basically everyone in the real world, who're affected by legislation squeezed out by the government. The House of Lords is an instructive example, as patronage is slowly being phased out, to be replaced by nominations of members based on 'conspicuous merit' and decided by an impartial committee. Just look at the list of authors on that Lords blog alone, there are professors, teachers, lawyers and scientists.
So, for what it's worth, I would like to see the Canadian Senate change from a system of patronage (Senators appointed by the PM). To one where the public may nominate Senators, who're then appointed by an impartial committee based on conspicuous merit.
* Note: the US system is completely different to Canada or the UK, so please don't think I'm casting aspersions on your own elected Senate. They may have the same name, but the purposes are different.
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
No matter how much DRM and copyright protection laws you support, Hollywood and the media will never like you. So you may as well go the opposite way, put your free market money where your mouth is, and pick up a few tech votes.
This is my sig.
The green party is essentially the "Ralph Nader party" They elect no members and siphon off enough center/left votes to give yet more seats to the Conservatives. Idealistic people voting their idealism and giving the worse case result in reality.
Sorry, but this 'blame the third party' crap really piss me off, especially in this election, where it doesn't hold up to analysis. Even if you took every single Green vote in every riding and gave it to the Liberal candidate in that riding, the party would still have lost a dozen seats. No one lost this election for the Liberals except the Liberals, and the Greens certainly didn't prevent a Liberal government.
I'm proud to vote for whoever I think is the best party to lead Canada, and not for some 'lesser of two evils' party.
I came here for a good argument
Yeah, if you live in Canada, have linux, and own a dvd and a laptop, grab them both and go down to your MPs office. Boot up the machine, take the DVD out of its nice official commercial case, pop it into the drive, and start playback.
Then explaining to him/her how you are breaking US and (possibly soon to be) Canadian law by watching a DVD you own on a laptop you own (i.e., the machine has to circumvent the encryption in order to play it back to you).
I find drawing an analogy to making it illegal for anybody but the dealership to open the hood of your car a good example (sure, in theory, it may prevent hotwiring and such, but...)
Maybe, Maybe not.
This wasn't made an issue in the election. I got tons of mailers about this issue and that issue, but nothing about copyright reform. NO party thought it relevant to Canadians to tell them about the fact that they want to reform us to a more American style copyright? Why? They're all complicit, thinking that this will create new "jobs" and such.
What I don't get is why the Conservatives want to cut arts funding, yet at the same time grant these ridiculous anti-consumer anti-canadian drm laws into our society that benefit only the major label cartels.
It's all a disturbing level of secrecy, all the dominoes are conveniently falling into place worldwide to create this strange system that does nothing to help artists and everything to maintain the status quo.
I can see it happening already. Again. This is not a party issue. This is not a time to get all hung up on sour grapes.
Please recognize that no matter who introduces it, it requires more than one party to pass it. Get on your MP's case now, inform your friends and family about the situation, and heckle them to do something.
Furthermore, the National Post article on here a while ago indicated that it was the Liberals who introduced it the previous session (before the Conservatives were voted in).
I realize those who didn't vote Conservative like to scream and point fingers at them, but while you're whining about the evils of the Other Party we've got a parliament session happening with bills being voted upon. Get on it and do something useful with your government, it's the only one you've got.
It's like you're standing beside a building that's burning down, jabbering on about how self-righteous and awesome you are that you don't play with matches. STFU and put out the fire, you twits.
The assessment of the Conservative gain is 100% wrong, and conclusions proceeding from it may also be flawed. The Conservatives were facing a grossly underfunded Liberal Party in historic disarray, and led by a man widely perceived to be utterly unfit to be Prime Minister. The time was so ripe to grab a majority that the Conservatives broke their own platform promise to stick with a scheduled election (the "It was a minority and we couldn't help it" dodge is a complete red herring). The New Democratic Party, which would be regarded in the US as raving loony communists, also picked up seats.
The Tories have now been told twice to cool their jets, and they won't be going back to the public any time soon unless they want their asses thoroughly kicked. Seven out of 10 Canadians either voted against them or didn't vote at all (a historic low turn-out, by the way).
I won't bore you with further details (except to note that of all the parties, the only one that actually got more total votes was the Green Party), but the bottom line is that this result is a repudiation of the Conservative Party's attempt to steal candy from a baby. If they choose to introduce legislation like this, which has historically been unpopular with Canadians, they'll be playing with fire. Most likely, they'll either let it slide under the guise of building inter-party amity, or they'll allow the legislation to be brought forward, but not make voting a matter of confidence.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
It's obvious that people didn't vote IN the conservatives, they just voted OUT the liberals.
The thought being that despite their good work, there were one too many cock-ups (the gun registry) and one too many scandals (gomery report) for the liberals to keep on going. Obviously Canadians don't want the conservatives in power, but they don't want the liberals in power either, and the NDP and Greens are not prepared to run a majority government.
It's been a long time.
Given the Conservative Party's historic disregard of public opinion
The public didn't have to elect them. You get what you pay for.
Our conservatives support Canada's social programs and when in power have not and will not dismantle them. The CPC explicitly supports universal access to health care - see http://www.conservative.ca/EN/4739/78188. This is something the American conservatives do not support therefore our conservatives are clearly different from their conservatives.
Its our Liberal party that is friendly with big business - since the funding rules changed and big business can no longer donate to parties its the Liberals that have been screwed since big business has historically been where they get their funding. Its the Liberals that count amoung their numbers former RBC and TD Bank VPs (McCallum and McKenna).
The CPC is the middle-class party; the NDP is the party of the improvished. The Liberals are for the elitist and those they successfully con (like recent immigrants which are thankfully waking up to discover the NDP and CPC are more in tune with them).
In any case, for the bill to pass it has to pass the Liberal dominated Senate which wasn't elected. You can just as easily blame Liberals if it passess.
"Sorry, but this 'blame the third party' crap really piss me off, especially in this election, where it doesn't hold up to analysis."
The Greens are just one example and I acknowledged a weak Liberal leader as well. But in Canada we now have 3 "third" parties, all on the left (NDP, Green, Bloc)and two main parties (Liberals(center-left)/Conservatives(right)). It doesn't matter who leads the Liberals they won't get a majority in the current conditions, they might squeeze out a minority. While the conservatives occupy the right alone and came very close to a majority and would have had it if not for a few miss-steps that cost them votes in Quebec.
As far as analysis. There was one in a newspaper recently which indicated the Greens siphoned off enough votes that 19 less Liberals and NDP were elected.
So the Greens elected no members but did result in 19 more conservatives being elected.
What pisses me off is people who can't look pragmatically at voting and vote on misguided idealism that results in electing the greater of evils.
If progressive voters had voted strategically, they would have sent more Liberals, more NDP and more Bloc and more Greens to the government. Instead we get more and more conservative in a country that is largely progressive and left leaning.
"The current bill limits what can be claimed against an individual, so there won't be any embarrassing stories about 100's of thousand dollar claims against grandmothers."
If you look at the Canadian Bill it is $500 limit per file downloaded, but $20 000 per file uploaded. This is actually much worse than the US laws as they stand. AFAIK everyone I know in the USA was busted as a uploading or "making available".
I agree that this issue is beyond the typical citizens understanding or concern, but there was no time to build up any kind of flac on this. The Conservatives only announced the return after the final debate and after Advanced Polling had closed with less than week before the full polls. It received no public scrutiny. This could have been used to mobilize the young as this is essentially the coming of the digital police state and it will affect the most connected (the young) the most.
People seems to assume this is some sort of made in Canada fluffy bunny DMCA lite. It isn't. This is an RIAA wet dream.
People tout the lower $500 fine per file, but that is downloading, most people get busted for uploading in the USA (which most file sharing clients do) the fine for that is $20 000 per file. Which is also the fine for breaking any DRM. Say hello to bankrupting lawsuits in Canada for your kids file sharing.
It also makes "making available" a crime, where this is being challenged in the states, it will be a codified law with this bill.
It also gives the power to corporations to make anything they want law, by make EULA 100% binding. Something else that was shotdown in the USA.
Say goodbye to any semblance of fair use, or first sale doctrine type rights. They are all out the window.
Basically whatever corporations say goes and huge fines if you disagree.
Of course that this was returning was only announced days before the election so no opposition could be built up against it.
Yes that is more or less what happened, but just like last time, Harper will continue to do whatever he pleases and govern like he has a majority.
Given no one wants another election, we can look forward to about a year of Harper dictatorship as he pushes any legislation he feels like.
For Harper the election was win-win. He had a shot at majority, but even if he failed, he would get another year at minimum where he was untouchable and could do what he wanted all the while taunting the opposition.
Liberals introduced a very similar bill just before they got thrown out. It would not have made a difference. It was inevitable.
"Given the Conservative Party's historic disregard of public opinion..."
Let's consider two situations:
1. A party states "We have decided to oppose cause X because we find that most people are really opposed to X, and so we feel we should implement what we feel is the public moral consensus and the desire of the majority".
The critics reply: "Populists! Unprincipled demagogues! Solely caring about power, they have turned their coat with the wind. They seek to gather votes at any costs, by promising whatever short-sighted desires are popular in the public eye at any time!"
2. A party states "We have decided to oppose cause X because we feel that it is the right thing to do for various reasons, even though this is against a clear popular majority".
The critics reply: "Ignoramuses! Despots! Solely caring about short-sighted desires, they ignore what everyone else agrees on. The wisdom of the majority consensus is lost on them, stubborn idiots. People have spoken, and the people has rejected their dystopian, experimental society model!"
Hence it is the case that politics will always be a shitty, dirty, disgusting business, and those that take part are more likely than not to be the worst kinds of human trash. I only wish many politicians were dead :)
What do you do if your MP is Rob Anders? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Anders
But in Canada we now have 3 "third" parties, all on the left (NDP, Green, Bloc
No. We have one third party, and that's the Bloc Quebecois. The NDP can have the honour of sharing that title once they either eclipse the 50-seat mark, or hold the title of official oposition. and the Greens actually need to take a seat at all to be considered relevant, or least, as a nation-wide party, manage a larger chunk of the popular vote than a party running only in a single province.
The NDP is the fourth party.
The Greens are the "fifth" party.
So the Greens elected no members but did result in 19 more conservatives being elected.
And had the Liberals and NDP taken those seats instead, the conservatives would still have a minority government. And even had the Liberals taken all 19 of those seats, it would ultimately make the Liberals strong enough to benefit the Bloc, handing Duceppe the balance of power, and setting up a situation where both the minority government and opposition party have to cater to the Bloc to get anything done.
While the conservatives occupy the right alone and came very close to a majority and would have had it if not for a few miss-steps that cost them votes in Quebec.
They would not have gotten the 12 or so seats they needed for a majority in Quebec. Quebecois do not trust the conservatives, in fact they're mistrusted almost as much as we mistrust Liberals (but not as much as we mistrust Dion). The only way they'd have gotten the seats they needed in Quebec, would have been had the Bloc not run (Hint: BQ took as many seats this year as they did last time. Conservatives lost a couple, but the real news is that NDP managed a seat in Quebec).
If progressive voters had voted strategically, they would have sent more Liberals, more NDP and more Bloc and more Greens to the government. Instead we get more and more conservative in a country that is largely progressive and left leaning.
More Liberals? Do you seriously trust Stephane Dion to run this country anywhere other than into the ground? The liberals fucked up hard, and Dion himself is walking fuckup, they should not be rewarded for incompetence. Furthermore, if the forty-some-odd percept of eligible voters who didn't hit the polls had bothered getting off their lazy, apathetic asses and bothered to cast their vote things would have been different.
The fact that Canada is largely progressive and left-leaning is ultimately meaningless if the left can't be bothered to cast a vote.
Blame the third party all you want. It's the easy way out, and the classic scapegoat, but ultimately you're not only throwing your credibility out the windows, you're ignoring the much, much more important problem of historically high voter apathy.
What pisses me off is people who can't look pragmatically at voting and vote on misguided idealism that results in electing the greater of evils.
What shits me is people who won't seem to understand that voting strategically is what left us with a conservative minority in the first place. Or have we already forgotten the whole "let's punish the Liberals for the Paul Martin scandal by voting conservative" game from just two years ago?
Vote based on platform. Vote for the party which best represents your beliefs and ideals, vote based on who you feel is best fit to represent you as a citizen and run the country. That's the whole point of democracy.
Fortunately, I'm blessed as a Quebecois in that the party who best represents my interests as a Quebecois is in fact a strategic vote. A strong Bloc who holds the balance of power equates to Quebec holding the balance of power. I get represented fairly, and you get spared a conservative majority. Everyone wins.
And this lesser of two evils business? Yes, a conservative majority is the greater evil, but the unified Quebecois vote prevents that from occuring.
A c
Comment removed based on user account deletion
It doesn't matter who leads the Liberals they won't get a majority in the current conditions, they might squeeze out a minority.
What you don't seem to understand is that a large percentage of people in Canada don't particularly LIKE the Liberals, and don't want to see them rule on their own.
If they want to stop the Conservatives, they can try a hand at forming a coalition. But don't ask me to vote for a party I don't like just because you hate the Conservatives more.
As far as analysis. There was one in a newspaper recently which indicated the Greens siphoned off enough votes that 19 less Liberals and NDP were elected.
Maybe you could provide a link, since I got my numbers by actually looking at the winning margins in seats lost by Liberals.
If progressive voters had voted strategically, they would have sent more Liberals, more NDP and more Bloc and more Greens to the government. Instead we get more and more conservative in a country that is largely progressive and left leaning.
Only if literally millions of voters sat down together and tediously worked out where it would be best to send their votes. Who's being the naive idealist again?
I came here for a good argument
"Maybe you could provide a link, since I got my numbers by actually looking at the winning margins in seats lost by Liberals."
I am not sure what you are referring to on that link you provide, since in the 15 losses listed with margins for the liberals, the biggest margin was 2.7%. With the greens pulling 7%, it is easy to see that they cost many seats. Vote splitting a well known phenomena. I am not going to argue the number of seats the Greens cost. It clearly elected many extra conservatives with vote splitting. The 19 number I referenced came from this news story:
http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=832e5b09-2500-4976-8732-698310091024
"The Green party again cleaved votes away from the NDP and Liberals and were on pace to take away enough votes to help elect Conservatives in 19 ridings."
Whether the actual number is 12 or 20 is not the issue. The Greens are a seat-less party that draws only one result from their votes: Electing more Conservatives.
"Only if literally millions of voters sat down together and tediously worked out where it would be best to send their votes. Who's being the naive idealist again?"
You don't need to actually work together with anyone to vote strategically, you just need some information about the relative position of candidates in your riding. Such resource was a available and I used it and I didn't have to "sit down with millions of voters". Obviously strategic voting isn't for everyone, but if more progressive voters did it, progressive parties would hold more sway in the house of commons.
One strategic voting resource:
http://www.voteforenvironment.ca/
"It also should be kept in mind that Harper's 37.63% of the popular vote comes from a mere 59% of the population who voted... which means that a mere 22% of the population actually WANTS him in power."
Actually, it means that number of people that want Harper in power is 22% + the portion of the 41% that didn't vote but is happy with the conservative leadership.
People who don't vote are: (a) uninterested and don't care (b) disillusioned and aren't happy with any party (c) happy with the status quo and doubt it'll change
I'm willing to bet that a much larger part of that unknown 41% supported the conservatives than supported any other party.
Conservative in the US.
LESS GOVERNMENT!
LESS TAXES.
MORE PRIVACY.
Minimal gun control.
Romney would have been a good candidate for a truly conservative position... McCain is more like a "neocon" as they are called.
It was Bush that caused the Republicans to abandon their truly conservative ways. It is shameful to see how much the government has grown in these past 8 years.
And no, Obama won't be better for that. McCain (AT LEAST) has some fiscal conservative views. This includes cutting government.
Either way, the USA is screwed for at least 4 years.
judging by the laws we've seen in the US, I'd go with fascist conservative, personally...
In Quebec it is a bit more complicated than you might think. Liberal and conservative parties are both conservatives. The NPD and green are the only real liberal. The bloc BQ is a mix of everything. People vote for the BQ because they don't trust the politcal parties of English Canada.
Many in my generation will never vote for the liberal party until there is a formal apology for the occupation of Montreal by the Canadian army in 1970. What is left is a choice between the conservative and the BQ. The NPD party has always opposed any special status of Quebec within the Canadian confederation.
The only Canadian party that has done anything good for Quebec is the conservative party.
Mulroney blew it when he tried to force a change in the constitution that would screw French Canadians.
The problem for many people with the conservative party is some of their positions. For instance they would have won big in Quebec if they had not decided to cut funding to the arts. What is forgotten and show that they are completely out of touch with Quebec is that the Quebec TV unlike the english Canadian TV is largely local and very popular. Any cuts in the arts would seriously damage that. Their support of Bush in the war was also a serious problem. Even though many really don't like Duceppe, they had little choice. Most people prefer a minority conservative government to anything else. Duceppe can block a lot of moronic stuff. I doubt though that he would block the DMCA because, you have to remember that his dad was a TV and radio star and he is bound to have a lot of friends in the industry.
The liberal party is the party of the english. The liberal vote is concentrated in english areas.
The leader of the liberal party is a French immigrant who is hated by most French Canadians in Quebec because he is a snob and an asshole.
He was nominated leader to put the French Canadians at their place, sort of an uncle Tom.
The reason PR failed is exactly because of campaigners like this one. Usually representing entrenched party interests (getting their 4 year dictatorships). Every discussion would have Liberal and Conservative representatives (the main beneficiaries) spewing anti PR FUD.
PR is not about producing minority governments. It is about producing coalition governments. Failure dispense with the all or nothing fight for majority governments, and refusal to cooperate in governing coalitions with minorities is also part of the resistance. A coalition as a viable governing can be very workable and many (most?) western democracies have some form of PR. It is more cooperative and less political.
Any party that tried to entrench old cronies (another common piece of FUD) would suffer extensively at the ballot box. If we had MMP and Brian Mulroney was a list Candidate, the party would sink into the toilet. The opposition would have a field day saying a Vote for the Conservatives is a Vote for Brian Mulroney. Parties are politically expediant and they would axe any member that the public found disagreeable.
I would like PR, but it will never happen because of the extensive FUD machine arrayed against from the mainline parties who benefit disproportionately from FPTP.
Unfortunately FUD is the favored and often winning tactic to block any change.
See, if you were smarter you'd realize there is a difference between criticism and intolerance, and as such your entire response is an emotional tantrum that is moot.
A difference your original post, and your follow up defense of it, make clear you don't have the intellectual chops to understand.
"The government grants you rights, not the other way around."-- beav007. Yes, these people really exist...
Our conservatives != your conservatives.
That must be why Stephen Harper keeps saying that he's not George Bush.
Its actually amazing that people don't understand the difference in Canadian politics and American politics:
Back in the day the Reform party represented similar views as more moderate/liberal Republicans
The Conservative party of today represents similar views as more moderate/conservative Democrats
The Liberal party of today represents similar views as the core of the Democrats
The NDP party of today represents similar views as the extreme elements of the Democrats
Certainly, changing the copyright laws in Canada by the Conservative party is a (generally) bad thing but it is a change that would probably be made regardless of who was in power. The unfortunate thing is that lobby groups have a lot of power in every government, few politicians understand the consequences of legislation like this, and few pieces of legislation allow a free vote.
Very few outside of geeks care about the DMCA.
This statement belies an ignorance of the issue here in Canada. It seems to me a good portion of the debate is around media and culture and content than technology. It isn't a big issue at the moment, but I'd say it is more broad based and proportionally larger issue here than in the US, largely because of the cultural/"Canadian Identity" factor--the concern is that it is too "DMCA Like" through bullying from American "mafIAA" cartel groups. In the US, sovereignty risk is measured on dependency on foreign oil. Canada, a net exporter of oil with a trade surplus that is geographically huge but sparsely populated, has other concerns--namely around out cultural identity (being seen as more than a de-facto 51st state of the globally dominant next door neighbour). Though it is a minor issue on the political landscape, that environment makes C-61 more visible than it would be in the US.
This entire /. article, in fact, belies the ignorance that /. editors have of Canadian politics. Bill C-61 is not a product of a partisan/ideological movement within Canada. It is in fact the RE-introduction of a LIBERAL bill from the previous parliament (C-60) that died on the order table when the Liberals lost a confidence vote triggering the 2006 election. Not only was C-60 fundamentally similar to C-61, it was in fact slightly WORSE and MORE like the DMCA than C-61 was. Not only did the Liberals introduce "DMCA-Lite" into Parliament for debate with C-60.
C-60/61 was NOT about some "right wing" ideology and electing Liberals would've done next to NOTHING to reduce the likelihood of a re-emergence of a DMCA-like copyright bill. Previous (Liberal) governments made the decision to sign onto WIPO treaties and it is the obligations under that international treaty that C-60, and later C-61, owed their existence. The Liberals leadership has been silent on the issue and opposition to C-61 by Liberals was not only not universal, it was in the minority--less than 10 percent of Liberal candidates voiced any sort of objection to it.
The problem here is that the only partisan opposition to C-61 is from the socialist New Democrats and the Green party, which is a minor player in Canadian politics and seems firmly in the grip of socialist-minded interests as well, despite trying to distance itself from "left-right" positioning in the past. My history of political involvement began with the Reform party and continues on to some degree with the present governing Conservatives, yet I am opposed to Bill C-61. At a grass roots level, I can tell you that support for C-61 amongst Conservative voters is FAR from universal--quite far in fact. The present day Conservative party is an amalgamation of two now-defunct parties, and those from the Reform-Alliance part of that amalgamation include a sizable amount of "libertarian-minded" types and that party's policy was populist-driven (it positioned itself to the right not because Manning's or council's personal direction but because the party was formally founded in Alberta where people tend to be of that mindset, and such most members were from the west.
Though the formation of the new Conservative party helped unify opposition and break the Liberal stranglehold on parliament (where Cretien's Liberals were able to obtain majority status with nearly the same vote the Conservatives got last week in their minority win) it meant we lost what was a distinct choice in the Reform-Alliance option. That party has a real avenue for ground-floor supporters to shape policy that failed to get notice outside its base in Western Canada. Opposition to C-61 would've been a logical policy plank (as the bill countered the Reform position on defending individual rights) and a possibility (because policies in that party were directly influenced by the votes of individual members at constituency meetings).
It is important to note that Prentice (the minister that introduced C-61) h
People forget that it was the Liberals who came up with Bill C-60, C-61's predecessor. I've come to the conclusion that both parties are essentially in the MAFIAA's pocket, although Geist's list of 'Copyright MP's gives me hope.
In socialist Canada, the party line tows YOU!!
(BTW, it's 'toe' -- to stand in formation)
Also, for another poster: MP stands for Member of Parliament, somewhat similar to congress(wo)man. We also have a Senate, but they are appointed, not elected.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Judging by the actions (remember - observe what they do, not what they say) of the current US administration, I'd say you are exactly right. Fascist conservative sounds accurate enough.