Quote:
Originally Posted by lio45
Why would we want to fill that void, given we're an indirect democracy / winner-takes-all system? It's the classic case of two cat candidates getting 30% each and the dog gets elected with 40%. Normally you just run the best cat and it wins the election with 60% against the dog's 40%.
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But this is only true at the riding level. You can get a small national percentage of the vote in Canada, win a few seats due to local support, and end up with some influence. The NDP did have some influence in parliament recently.
I don't mind the third party aspect of the NDP (or the Greens) but in the JT era the Liberals have adopted many of the policies that those other parties might have used as differentiators in the past. For example, if you look at environmentalism and climate change concern today the NDP and Greens are not huge outliers (historically I guess the NDP may have looked at it differently due to labour concerns but they seem to have dropped that; in some alternate universe with lots of unionized rig workers maybe there would be an anti-carbon-tax NDP).
I'd like to see a more socially progressive party that is more conservative with government finances, is focused on cost of living (being able to say out loud that houses should cost less would be nice), etc. Maybe the Carney Liberals will be more like that in some ways. It is too bad that populist right-wing media has semi-captured and rotted the brains of the portions of the working class. This is the group that should be pushing for basic public services but is focused on bread and butter issues like food prices and rent and doesn't love the civil service being bloated for no reason.