Federal Election 2011

[Bdog]

I'm surprised no one is bringing up the Winnipeg-Portage la Prairie-Brandon HSR line... LOL JK

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by shreddog

So I had 5 minutes to kill and I did the CBC Vote Compass again, except that this time I answered either "neither agree or disagree" or "no opinion" to the Q's and "no opinion" to all the Leaders and Parties questions. I then went through "analyze your position" and indicated that none of the issues listed were important to me.

Guess what the answer from the tool was??

I'm closet to the Liberal Party of Canada - it was just above and to the left of me.

Not sure what this means - I'll let you be the judge - but it is only a tool afterall, right?

Some of my cow-orkers have been playing around with this tool a bit. The *only* way they could get anything other than "Liberal" was to answer as if they were rabid lunatics who want government to run everyone's lives (ended up heavily towards the Cons, ironically enough considering how most people think).

I normally laugh at people who say things like "CBC is a Liberal thing" but it's pretty funny. Their stance in this tool seems to be that 95% of people just naturally are Liberal, so only extremists would vote otherwise.

[harls]

Originally Posted by shreddog

So I had 5 minutes to kill and I did the CBC Vote Compass again, except that this time I answered either "neither agree or disagree" or "no opinion" to the Q's and "no opinion" to all the Leaders and Parties questions. I then went through "analyze your position" and indicated that none of the issues listed were important to me.

Guess what the answer from the tool was??

I'm closet to the Liberal Party of Canada - it was just above and to the left of me.

Not sure what this means - I'll let you be the judge - but it is only a tool afterall, right?

Someone at Queen's did the same thing.

http://www.torontosun.com/news/decision2011/2011/03/29/17798821.html

[shreddog]

Originally Posted by harls

Someone at Queen's did the same thing.

http://www.torontosun.com/news/decision2011/2011/03/29/17798821.html

I fully expect that many people will have done the same - I discovered many years ago, that much to my chagrin, I'm not as unique as I like to believe!

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by harls

Someone at Queen's did the same thing.

http://www.torontosun.com/news/decision2011/2011/03/29/17798821.html

At least the final analysis makes sense:

Cliff van der Linden, a Toronto researcher who developed the tool, said Brock received those responses because the questions are equally split between the left and right side of the political spectrum.

"So if you answer all one way or another, you're going to end up answering half left and half right -- and end up in the middle."

That's pretty much what you'd expect, assuming parties only sit on traditional "left vs right" lines and that you tailor your questions to bring this out. What I found more interesting is how a much broader variety of answers STILL results in mostly "Liberal".

[Calgarian]

In order to get Conservative, I had to answer all questions to the extreme and give Harper all 10s when the leader questions come up.

Ironically, I agree with the original that I did, it said I'm a liberal, and it put me in the bottom left corner, close to the axis.

[frinkprof]

Longtime SSP member William Hamilton (Beltliner) is running as the Green Party candidate for Calgary Centre.

http://calgarycentregreens.ca/william-hamilton/

[vid]

Originally Posted by Doady

The Conservatives seem to be only party that recognize the importance of ... building prisons for unreported crimes.

If the crimes are unreported, who is going to go into those prisons? Ghosts? Invisible people? Political dissidents? Crimes not only have to be reported, but they have to be followed up on as well. I reported an assault two months ago and it had broken up and dispersed before the police got there. That was a reported crime with no real investigation, no one to put in prison. And you think unreported crimes will catch more "bad guys" than that?

Originally Posted by Doady

That's why the Conservatives deserve our vote. Majority government or bust!

Your posts are starting to read like essays written by a naive 13 year old who got a lot of help from his alcoholic dad.

Originally Posted by Pimpmasterdac

However CBC just did a cost analysis of the $1,000 credit. With the cancellation of the textbook and educational credits, the net benefit is $442. Good but not good enough for tuition costs that are ~$5,000+!

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavo...ng-passport-it-gives-and-takes-away.html

That's such a Liberal bias the CBC has, refuting a Liberal plan like that to make it look almost worthless compared to the Conservative's status quo!

In addition to the fact that they're less than doubling the current pittance, it doesn't actually get deposited right away, so families can't have that RESP in the bank starting when their kid is 14 and have it grow interest over the next four years. It's a pretty — deal when you look closely, similar to Harper's income splitting for middle class families excluding the lower class that struggles even more, or the NDP's credit card interest rate cap which will just cause them to raise other fees, probably resulting in a net result where people pay even more for the damn things.

The sad thing is a lot of these policies are probably thought out well in advance of an election campaign. Do they not consider all possibilities before announcing them? The national parties obviously have little respect for the voters.

Originally Posted by shreddog

So I had 5 minutes to kill and I did the CBC Vote Compass again, except that this time I answered either "neither agree or disagree" or "no opinion" to the Q's and "no opinion" to all the Leaders and Parties questions. I then went through "analyze your position" and indicated that none of the issues listed were important to me.

Guess what the answer from the tool was??

I'm closet to the Liberal Party of Canada - it was just above and to the left of me.

Not sure what this means - I'll let you be the judge - but it is only a tool afterall, right?

I've noticed that a surprising number of people are getting Liberal as a result. I think it came up for you in that scenario however because you would end up in dead centre with no opinions, and the Liberals are the closest to the centre.

Originally Posted by MrOilers

Exactly. She doesn't deserve to be in leadership debates.

The Greens have as much presence in parliament as every other one of these registered political parties:

Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party of Canada
Canadian Action Party
Christian Heritage Party of Canada
Communist Party of Canada
First Peoples National Party of Canada
Green Party of Canada
Libertarian Party of Canada
Marijuana Party
Marxist-Leninist Party of Canada
People's Political Power Party of Canada
Pirate Party of Canada
Progressive Canadian Party
Rhinoceros Party
United Party of Canada
Western Block Party

Except for the fact that they got 14.6 times as many votes as all of those parties combined and 67.9% as many votes as the Bloc Quebecois, but unlike the Bloc who ran candidates in only 75 ridings, they Greens ran a candidate in 303 of the 308 ridings, making them a true national party. They ran candidates in more than five times as many ridings as the Christian Heritage Party, the most popular of the fringe parties.

The Greens are a national party. More Canadians support them than the Bloc Quebecois in most polls. They should be included in the debates for that reason.

[shreddog]

Originally Posted by vid

...I think it came up for you in that scenario however because you would end up in dead centre with no opinions, and the Liberals are the closest to the centre....

Okay, I genuinely think someone from the Cons has hacked into Compass ...

Cleaned my cache and ran it answering "strongly agree" and ... am Liberal.
...

[freeweed]

Originally Posted by shreddog

Okay, I genuinely think someone from the Cons has hacked into Compass ... I just reran it selecting the "somewhat agree" button for all ... and am Liberal.

Cleaned my cache and ran it answering "strongly agree" and ... am Liberal.

Then once more, again with wiped cache, selected all "strongly disagree" and ... no this is getting ridiculous ... yup ... big ol Libbie!

I know the questions are staggered tp force you to pick from alternate sides of the scale, but come on! I honestly hope this is just coincidence, for if it's not, boy someone is going to catch it.

Already covered in my post above:

Cliff van der Linden, a Toronto researcher who developed the tool, said Brock received those responses because the questions are equally split between the left and right side of the political spectrum.

"So if you answer all one way or another, you're going to end up answering half left and half right -- and end up in the middle."

[Kilgore Trout]

um, i did the compass test and didn't end up as liberal. if you click on the same answer for every question you're not doing it properly.

[MrOilers]

Originally Posted by vid

Except for the fact that they got 14.6 times as many votes as all of those parties combined and 67.9% as many votes as the Bloc Quebecois, but unlike the Bloc who ran candidates in only 75 ridings, they Greens ran a candidate in 303 of the 308 ridings, making them a true national party. They ran candidates in more than five times as many ridings as the Christian Heritage Party, the most popular of the fringe parties.

The Greens are a national party. More Canadians support them than the Bloc Quebecois in most polls. They should be included in the debates for that reason.

Spin it however, but the Greens earned zero seats, have zero MPs, and their leader couldn't even win in her own riding.

They won nothing in the last election (they couldn't have won less, actually), and they deserve nothing.

[vid]

I just did it by alternating, strongly disagree/strongly agree, giving everyone at the end a 0, and I matched Liberal, farthest from Conservative.

By alternating strongly agree/strongly disagree (revering the answers), and giving everyone at the end a 0, I matched Liberal, farthest from NDP.

VoteCompass is definitely fucked.

Originally Posted by MrOilers

Spin it however, but the Greens earned zero seats, have zero MPs, and their leader couldn't even win in her own riding.

They won nothing in the last election (they couldn't have won less, actually), and they deserve nothing.

So almost a million Canadians are just shut out then? No wonder people are so apathetic to politics in our country.

[PoscStudent]

I hope the Progressive Canadian Party and the United Party of Canada get included in the debate, to bad the Newfoundland and Labrador First Party isn't on the go this election.

[MrOilers]

Originally Posted by vid

So almost a million Canadians are just shut out then?

That obviously isn't enough.

Not a single member of all the hundreds of candidates the Green party ran, won. They can come to the debates when they grow into a real electable party with real actual politicians sitting in actual Parliament.

[1ajs]

• Video Link

[BretttheRiderFan]

Originally Posted by shreddog

So I had 5 minutes to kill and I did the CBC Vote Compass again, except that this time I answered either "neither agree or disagree" or "no opinion" to the Q's and "no opinion" to all the Leaders and Parties questions. I then went through "analyze your position" and indicated that none of the issues listed were important to me.

Guess what the answer from the tool was??

I'm closet to the Liberal Party of Canada - it was just above and to the left of me.

Not sure what this means - I'll let you be the judge - but it is only a tool afterall, right?

It means the Liberals are closest to the centre of the political spectrum

I found it funny that my sister ended up NDP, my mother Liberal and my dad was Conservative so the whole thing isn't rigged. Answer honestly to all the questions and you will get a legitimate result

[SteelTown]

CHCH-TV to Broadcast a Complete Leaders' Debate

TORONTO, March 30 /CNW/ - Today Channel Zero announced that it is offended by the Broadcaster Consortium's decision to exclude one of the leaders of Canada's five major federal political parties from their leaders' debate. As a result, Channel Zero is extending an invitation to the leaders of The Conservative Party of Canada, The Liberal Party of Canada, the New Democratic Party, The Bloc Quebecois, and the Green Party of Canada to participate in a nationally televised and fully representative Leaders' Debate.

"Clearly, this type of behaviour illustrates one of the real dangers of media ownership concentration that we have witnessed recently in Canada. Democracy demands that the media simply relay the parties' positions without attempting to control the message. Excluding the leader of a party that garnered 1 out of every 15 votes in the 2008 federal election is just plain wrong", said Cal Millar, President of Channel Zero.

As an independent broadcaster with no network, BDU, or consortium affiliation, Channel Zero believes that the participation of all of the above leaders is of critical interest and importance to Canadians as they head to the polls in just over four weeks.

http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/March2011/30/c7846.html

[The Chemist]

Originally Posted by MrOilers

That obviously isn't enough.

Not a single member of all the hundreds of candidates the Green party ran, won. They can come to the debates when they grow into a real electable party with real actual politicians sitting in actual Parliament.

If we had a proper electoral system rather than a moronic relic, they would have seats in Parliament.

Any party with above 5% support nationally that runs candidates in all ridings deserves to have their leader in the debate, regardless of how many seats they have, IMO.

[jigglysquishy]

Large post here

Hopefully with the Green Part pushing HSR and Ignatieff also supporting it we will seem some much needed development in this area. Here's what its looking like right now.


This map shows the Windsor-Quebec corridor and the Alberta Corridor.





Two pictures of the Windsor-Quebec Corridor. There are 4 lines

• Toronto-Montreal via Ottawa
• Montreal-Quebec
• Toronto-Windsor via Kitchener and London
• Toronto-Buffalo via Hamilton

With Toronto-Montreal being the big one it should also be the faster one. Have it go at 350km/hr, with all the other trains going 280-300km/hr.

Note: The circles with an x in them would be theoretical stops.



And here's the Alberta one for reference


I also have a map with all theoretical rail lines for Canada. And I have a list for the high speed ones of populations and distances if anyone is interested.