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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."
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
You're absolutely wrong. Michael Geist writes a column for the Toronto Star which has a large readership and many 'common folk' were enlightened by his articles, and the Facebook group drew an immense popularity. There were so many people caring that they've prevented the last two from going through.
" 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.
makes a solid and concise against
You, my friend, are my hero. For you have nounified a preposition. Kudos to the greatest nounifier of the unnounifiable.
My loyalty is in your with, and I shall never turn in your against.
Conservatives have NOT been in control of the USA for the last eight years..
Our conservatives != your conservatives.
where does the article say that *ALL* conservatives are would vote for this and *all* NDP, Bloc, Green and Liberals would vote against ?
I don't think you understand how Canadian politics works. Unlike in the USA, the Prime Minister is a member of the house and has direct control over the party stance. This, coupled with extremely strong party discipline (you vote with the party EVERY time or you get kicked out, ruining your career), means that the P.M. is far more powerful than the President (within the political system; not in terms of overall world power) because in a majority government, the P.M. can pass basically any law he wants, as long as it satisfies the constitution.
That's not the case though, since he only has a minority of seats. Unfortunately, if a law fails to pass and it's an important one (read: whatever they want, so basically all of them), then the government fails and we have an election. But the Liberals won't allow this because they are very weak and would likely lose more in another election. If they go to the polls, it'll be about the budget or the Afghan war, not a copyright bill. TL;DR:
The bill will pass because the opposition Liberals have too much to lose in the election that will be called if it fails. End of Story.
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.