Quote:
Originally Posted by adamuptownsj
The parties don't like each other. They're not friends. They are not interchangable. As if to prove my point, YESTERDAY Arseneau accused the Liberals of forcing nursing home residents, including his grandmother, to register with the party during their most recent leadership race. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-b...ters-1.7205317
Your comment about a Higgs deeming a minority government constitutional is unfounded. We'd simply get BC 2017 redux at most.
No coalition talk will come until after an election. What this guy asked for was rejected by both parties very clearly. What he suggests is not something winning parties do-- Unite to Remain flipped precisely one extremely vulnerable Tory seat in the UK in 2019. The big-tent 'Por México al Frente' and 'Va por México' coalitions both failed in 2018 and 2021. These are moves floundering parties make. The NB Liberals are not floundering, they just have horrible vote distribution, which they're attempting to undo with 'good-government moderates' and have a strong chance at doing so. How you view this as subjective, IDK.
I am not amenable to the PCs or CPC for various reasons, which are not remotely relevant to development, taxation, social policy, or electoral politics. I simply like the entertainment aspect of provincial politics.
Amalgamation would be awful for the annexed and would produce few tangible benefits for residents. Saint John can't manage the lands it annexed in the 20th century properly, let alone taking on 3/4 of Kings County's population. I have no desire to inflict Brent Harris, Ivan Court, etc. types on anyone else. All these localities are functionally governed, and AFAIK have no serious financial issues. Within the last decade Saint John was under provincial direction reminiscent of Detroit. What I would do is fully municipalize the province. Either incorporate the rural districts if populated and contiguous, or annex their lands to neighbouring municipalities. The Southeast RD had 8 segments across two counties, for example. We could probably do with fewer types. We have one regional municipality. Not needed. Villages and towns should be merged into a single type, with larger towns pushed towards city status. |
I just assume Higgs would take a similar approach to Harper in 2008 when the opposition parties attempted to form a collation. Higgs would try and call it undemocratic and push for a do over. As for Higgs deeming a minority government unconstitutional… not sure what you mean. I never said that.
Regardless, strategic voting will be crucial in this next election. Best bet for the province, and entertainment value would be another minority government situation like 2018. Fingers crossed.
As for amalgamation? Awful for the annexed areas? In what way? If we all amalgamated tomorrow, Rothesay, Quispamsis, and Grand Bay would still be very nice communities. They wouldn’t be wiped off the map or suddenly become terrible places to live.
Not wanting to inflict Brent Harris types on the valley… how kind and thoughtful of you.
But I think your logic is flawed. If we amalgamated, the valley could play a role in saving us from having toxic people like Brent Harris on council, rather than us taking the brunt of these types caustic influence on our city’s development.
It’s interesting you brought up Detroit, because it’s quite an analogous comparison. What we have in The Saint John Region is a very typical American style city and suburbs outside the city situation. Which is atypical in Canada. Why we’d want to follow the Detroit model instead of the Halifax or Toronto model is just beyond reason at this point.
No matter how you try and spin it, it’s a rotten situation in the Saint John Region. The city’s top income earners overwhelmingly live outside the city limits, have disproportionate influence on the politics and economy of a city in which they don’t reside, and many of the top positions at the City of Saint John are held by people who live outside the city. Meanwhile, Quispamsis, Rothesay, Grand Bay’s leaders try and say they already contribute their “fair share” towards the City of Saint John, and that providing anymore would start to be unfair to them. Their combined contributions are a mere drop in the bucket towards the city budget, but close to half of the regions population now resides outside the city limits.
While amalgamation might have been unpopular for some of Halifax’s most affluent suburbs, it would be objectively false to say amalgamation was awful for them. I see no reason to believe the situation would be any different here in the Saint John Region. It would be unpopular among the most affluent suburbs, but it would in no way be awful for them. It would set the entire region up for sustained, long term economic growth and development. The only thing keeping it from happening is the oversized political clout of these affluent suburbs, but the eventually, it’s just going to be inevitable.
One of the unique opportunities afforded by amalgamation could be a chance for a name change. The constituent communities would retain their names, but the Regional Municipality as a whole would probably benefit with going with something more marketable and original than “Saint John Regional Municipality”. Such a change could help quell confusion between Saint John and St. John’s, which is a bigger issue than many here seem to think, and which has always been a bigger issue for Saint John than St. John’s.
Most importantly, it would be a comprehensive solution to dealing with disparities and inefficiencies within the Saint John Region that exist today. It would save the Region money overall, even if it cost Rothesay a little more.
What’s good for Saint John is good for Rothesay; however, the converse of this adage is rarely the case, if not never. I’ve always been of the opinion that a suburb is only as good as the city at its core… the last model we should be looking to follow here is Detroit and other American cities with bedroom communities that double as tax shelters.
I’ve yet to hear a single cogent argument for why Amalgamation worked for Halifax, but wouldn’t work for Saint John. Just the same old tired arguments that it would be bad for KV, or highly biased and inaccurate sob stories about how regional amalgamation was actually bad for Halifax’s suburbs.
I think we’d all like to Envision a Saint John where the city and its suburbs had more equal, cooperative relations, than the situation there persisted for decades now, with quite a lot of antagonism, finger pointing, and ear plugging between Saint John and its suburbs. The city-suburb dynamic here sucks frankly, and it’s one of the aspects of the region we should be the least proud of. I don’t see a way to change this situation, short of amalgamation. Forcing Quispamsis to stop calling itself a town and start calling itself a city would barely change anything. I appreciate your response and idea, I just fail to see how it would be as nearly as positive a change for Saint John when compared to regional amalgamation. Hopefully amalgamation is something we see realized in our lifetimes.
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