Canadian Election

[Thoronas]

Oh thank god. Joyce Murray won the Vancouver Quadra riding. My vote went to a winning candidate!!

I wonder if Hedy Fry will be able to hold on to Vancouver Centre. I seriously hope so. Early on she's leading, the Cons, NDP and Greens are all very close together right now.

[Olo401]

Well.. my condolences on the Harper win. The NDP made a bit more of a dent this time through, but the Libs are just bleeding away too many seats to the Tories now. They need to either change their stripes big time or just get out of the way.

I was surprised that the Tories got all those extra seats around Toronto.. wtf

And err.. le Coq-Bloc. D'accord imbeciles! Si vous ne va faire de votre.. err.. demenagement (?) et quitter le pays, taisez-vous! Faire la travail du pays! My French is a lil' rusty there so forgive me..

[Charla]

Well fuck, looks like four more years of Steven Harper and a US-style neo-con agenda.

Hold on, I thought neocon was supposed to refer to a foreign policy ideology. Since when does Canada even have a foreign policy?

Seriously though, look on the bright side. You still have that whole health care thing, and your very own Weird Al song.

[Shalyn]

NDP only seemed to make a dent into Liberal territory, not.. Tory.. unfortunately. Yay for another election in a year (most likely).

[Olo401]

Hold on, I thought neocon was supposed to refer to a foreign policy ideology. Since when does Canada even have a foreign policy?

Remember Dubya's joke during the 2004 debates - Want some wood?

Where do you think he got the wood from?!

And frankly dealing with a large separatist province kinda counts as foreign policy in a way.. Down here in the states the leaders of such rogue states just get picked to be our vice presidential candidates. Edit: Down here.. owai

[Kaylia]

Remember Dubya's joke during the 2004 debates - Want some wood?

Where do you think he got the wood from?!

And frankly dealing with a large separatist province kinda counts as foreign policy in a way.. Down here in the states the leaders of such rogue states just get picked to be our vice presidential candidates. Edit: Down here.. owai

33% of the province is separatist, dont include all of us with them. Not to mention the trend is going downhill for a while now.

[Richybear]

Just make sure you leave the Habs.

It's funny how that's my main concern with the Quebec separatist movement is like "Oh no! My Habs!!" LOL

I personally voted NDP... and they got smoked in my riding as I said before.

I'm gonna miss those Richard Dreyfus ads... er I mean Jack Layton. haha

[Blarg]

Well fuck, looks like four more years of Steven Harper and a US-style neo-con agenda.

In my own riding and the riding directly to the north, the Liberals fielded two excellent candidates with fantastic credentials that were far above and beyond what the incumbents (Denise Savoie, NDP and Hon. Gary Lunn, Tory) have, but just couldn't get any help from the electorate.

That only 2 Liberals got elected in BC is a pretty big blow and I guess it did prove that the average British Columbia just can't get behind Stephane Dion. That makes me really sad since I was one of his earliest supporters and organizers during his leadership campaign in the province and we had high hopes that he could defeat Harper, but I guess Canadians don't want anything new or progressive.

Briony Penn?

[Wizerd]

Well fuck, looks like four more years of Steven Harper and a US-style neo-con agenda.

In my own riding and the riding directly to the north, the Liberals fielded two excellent candidates with fantastic credentials that were far above and beyond what the incumbents (Denise Savoie, NDP and Hon. Gary Lunn, Tory) have, but just couldn't get any help from the electorate.

That only 2 Liberals got elected in BC is a pretty big blow and I guess it did prove that the average British Columbia just can't get behind Stephane Dion. That makes me really sad since I was one of his earliest supporters and organizers during his leadership campaign in the province and we had high hopes that he could defeat Harper, but I guess Canadians don't want anything new or progressive.

Stephane Dion is a retard, but I voted for Keith Martin(Lib) in my riding in hopes of helping prevent a Conservative Majority. Last I checked, Troy DeSouza's(tory) lead was 72 over Martin, not sure if Martin ever pulled ahead. Troy's vision of getting rid of the Colwood crawl is pretty grand and would be nice but he's a Conservative and nothx to a majority.

Glad to see the tories never got their Majority vote though, that makes me happy. I like Stephen Harper as a leader, just not an iron fist-style leader.

[Skjie]

Glad to see the tories never got their Majority vote though, that makes me happy. I like Stephen Harper as a leader, just not an iron fist-style leader.

The problem is that's pretty much all he's able to do. If he governed last time like he had a majority, I bet we can expect the same this time.

[Charla]

The problem is that's pretty much all he's able to do. If he governed last time like he had a majority, I bet we can expect the same this time.

Didn't you get the memo? Consensus-building is so 20th century.

[Skjie]

Clearly.

[Vandalhart]

We need all of those old people who are voting conservative to die off already.

[Olo401]

Okay I have a question on something that I wasn't quite able to figure out last night.. I was watching some of the vote totals for individual ridings and they seemed insanely LOW, at least compared to vote totals in an average US congressional district. I didn't see a single vote total over 100k. Are those actual counts, or are they scaled down i.e 1=1000

[Annihilator]

And err.. le Coq-Bloc. D'accord imbeciles! Si vous ne va faire de votre.. err.. demenagement (?) et quitter le pays, taisez-vous! Faire la travail du pays! My French is a lil' rusty there so forgive me..

let's see...

...

I have no idea what that means, but it sounds anti-sovereignist

anyhoo


To answer the question asked above, yes, the numbers are accurate, Canada has a pretty low population for its size

According to wiki, Canada has an approximate 33,401,000 people
so divided in all 300+ ridings, that gives us around 100,000 people per riding on average

And this little piece of info was especially interresting:

Ethnic groups 28% British, 23% French, 3.5% Aboriginal peoples, 47% other


I'm just happy that the Tories didn't manage to pull off a majority given the lack of popularity of Dion, their main opposition.

A lot of people in Quebec voted for the Bloc, not to get a Bloc representative, but rather to prevent any Conservative candidate from being elected, just like a lot of people voted for the Liberals for the same reason.

At least now Harper's going to have a tough time justifying spending roughly 240 millions for an election that brought him to the same setup that he qualified as "chaotic, unruly and impossible to lead"

[Vandalhart]

Another bad thing is that we don't have a cap on the number of years a Prime Minister can serve in office. Harper can run and run and run until he retires if he wants to.

It makes me sturgeon face

[Olo401]

let's see...

...

I have no idea what that means, but it sounds anti-sovereignist

It's basically saying if they're not gonna follow through on their plans to leave the country (or take sovereign control), shut up and do the country's work. Not meant to be anti-sovereignist - more like I was under the (apparently misguided) impression that the Bloc is holding onto a whole bunch of formerly Lib & NDP seats and are basically handing elections to Harper.

After last night tho, I kinda figured out that the Libs have become pretty soft under Dion's leadership, kinda like how the Democrats in our Congress were from 2000-2004. They'll probably come back at some point, but it'll take different party leadership to get there.

[Skjie]

We need all of those old people who are voting conservative to die off already.

Too bad that in BC and Alberta, it's not the young people at all. Look at ridings in the lower mainland (Abbotsford, Langley) or Calgary where Tories got in with over 60% of the vote.

As for low numbers, yeah, there is roughly 103000 people in each electoral riding, but just over half vote.

EDIT: As for the Bloc, I think that after the Clarity Act, they're more focused on getting recognition and money than on actually sperating.

[Mytiwar]

People can vote for the Bloc if they want to... there is multiple good reasons to do so and if y'all lived in Quebec you'd understand.

Just as I understand why y'all hating on the bloc because if I lived somewhere else I probably would.

That being said I voted NDP. Fuck yes Thomas Mulcair the only orange in all of Quebec.

[Elesirdur]

Briony Penn?

Yeah, Briony Penn in Saanich-Gulf Islands who lost by about 2500 votes, EVEN WHEN 3800 PEOPLE VOTED FOR A NON-EXISTENT NDP CANDIDATE - THANKS FOR ELECTING GARY "the midget" LUNN AGAIN DICKBAGS

/angryfacepalm

Ahem sorry, that kind of shit really pisses me off.

The other candidate I was refering to was Anne Park Shannon who was the Liberal candidate for Victoria. She was an economic diplomat to China in the 80s and then South American countries in the 90s, an ADM to the Federal Finance Ministry, and a prominant public servant in Foreign Affairs even before her diplomatic postings. Compared to Denise Savoie, who was elected again, who pretty much only counts being a member of Victoria's City Council as her big achievement it's a pretty stark comparison in qualifications. But then again, getting elected to Parliament has little to do with one's qualifications to serve as an elected member and do the business of the nation so I guess it's all a moot point now.

For me it's nice to see some more BC ridings keep their Liberal members, like Keith Martin in Esquimalt-Juan de Fuca as well as Ujjal Dosanjh and Sukh Dhaliwal over in Vancouver just hanging on by a very slim margin. Raymond Chan losing his seat to a Conservative candidate in Richmond is pretty surprising; Chan was like a rock in the Chinese-Canadian community, but I guess they decided to line up behind Alice Wong and vote conservative instead.