Toronto Star endorses the NDP (Cdn election Monday)

Source: Toronto Star

... Unless the pollsters have totally misread the mood of the voters, Stephen Harper’s Conservatives look to be heading for another victory. As we said on Friday, that would be bad for the country. The last thing Canada needs is an affirmation of a government obsessed with control, dismissive of critics, and determined to further diminish the role of the state in charting a better future for the country.

Voters who believe that Canada can — and should — aim higher have an important decision. Until 10 days ago, they had only one realistic alternative to the Conservatives — the Liberal party under Michael Ignatieff. Today, that is no longer the case.

The New Democrats have been reinvigorated under the leadership of Jack Layton. After Monday, they may well challenge the Liberals as the principal national standard-bearer for the roughly two voters in three who disagree fundamentally with the course charted by the Harper Conservatives. Progressive voters should give them their support on Monday.

In the past it has been easy to dismiss the federal NDP as naive idealists. That no longer applies. In this campaign they have emerged as a credible force, for many reasons.

...

Read more: http://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/article/983376--toronto-star-endorses-the-ndp

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The item is an editorial; the fact that it was published is truly the news -- big news in Canada. ;)

The Toronto Star is the largest (English-language) circulation newspaper in Canada. It is generally known, historically, as the PR firm for the Liberal Party. (A related column points out that it endorsed the NDP under Ed Broadbent in 1979, and the former Progressive Conservative Party under Bob Stanfield in 1972 and 1974, 1974 being when I voted PC myself as a strategic anti-Liberal/Trudeau vote.)


The footnote editorial to the one quoted above is an intelligent caveat:

But vote strategically

In some parts of the country there is a real risk that a surge toward the NDP could sap the Liberal vote and have the perverse effect of tipping more seats to the Conservatives. Voters worried about that should consider voting strategically — giving their support to the progressive candidate best placed to win.

In much of the GTA <Greater Toronto Area>, that means Liberals. Indeed, there are a number of seats that Liberals won by a narrow margin over Conservatives in 2008. <identifies ridings/candidates>

Going for the NDP in those ridings risks handing more seats to the Conservatives. That would be the worst outcome for the province — and the country.

To see how strategic voting works:

http://www.projectdemocracy.ca/

Project Democracy is a tool to help you determine if there is a way to "amp up" your vote and stop a Harper majority. By using a riding by riding election prediction model based on the most up to date public opinion polls, we can tell you which Party is best positioned to defeat the Conservative in your riding. Just enter your postal code in the box to the right.

I live in a safe NDP riding, and that's become almost boring. ;)

Kudos to The Star.

Oakville isn't going to go NDP, tho, so I'll vote Liberal with the hope that we can unseat the Tory in my riding.

Sid

Oakville: "This appears to be a safe Conservative seat. Vote your preference."

;)

I voted last Saturday in the advanced poll. In this constituency, at least those parts I've seen of it, there are 15 NDP lawn signs for every (sitting) Liberal one, and I haven't seen one Conservative lawn sign.

Two houses side-by-side, signs on the front fence facing both directions ... in a totally safe NDP riding anyhow.


Just got back home tonight from York-Simcoe. Home of Peter Van Loan. You'd like to think that places like that (and people like him) don't exist in this country (see my post in the Canada forum).

http://www.projectdemocracy.ca/york-simcoe

This appears to be a safe Conservative seat. <this will be the understatement of the 2011 election> Vote your preference.

Strategic voting can't help stop Harper in this riding, but consider signing up with VotePair.ca to swap your vote with someone willing to vote strategically in a riding where it can.

Plus, it's a dupe.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x600458

Your post there, that is.

Put it to the moderators, if you like.

My opinion, as I stated at the outset, is that the FACT of the editorial and its content is in fact very large news. To Canadians in any event, you not being one, from what I can tell, so you maybe not being best placed to make that assessment.

I suppose I could have found a news article about the fact of the Star's editorial stance ...

Allow me to amend my ways retroactively:

http://www.northumberlandview.ca/index.php?module=news&func=display&sid=7989

LifeView: Toronto Star Endorses Layton & NDP

Published on Apr 30, 2011 - 04:41 PM

Readers might have thought they had awakened in bizarro world when the Toronto Star endorsed Layton and the New Democrats as the party to support in Monday's election. For as long as humans have walked upright that newspaper has been Liberal to the core, and it must have been quite the editorial meeting that ended with this shocking result. ...

here's hoping your elections get you what you want and need.

and for the Quebecois:

Bonne Chance les Canadiens!

Might as well keep this bilingual :)

from what I hear, the Bloc Quebecois is tanking at least as fast as the Liberals. Again, the NDP stands to benefit. :bounce:

the Bloc would have been my last choice. I'm a bit of a Duceppe fan. And there's no question they're often the most progressive element in the House. Which of course explains why it's their votes we're pulling. ;)

It sure will be interesting to see where those Liberal votes go.

Is that more common than one would realise by reading what little Canadian news is offered in USAmerica?

Among genuine thinking progressives. Not that that's a terribly large segment of the population.

The Bloc really is very progressive on just about everything. Opposition to the invasion of Iraq and the continuing Canadian presence in Afghanistan; support for reproductive rights; support for strong gun control; opposition to all of the hideous Conservative criminal justice plans (minimum sentences, megaprisons, adult treatment of young offenders); efforts to get federal anti-scab legislation. Out in front of the NDP on some things.

I just don't pay much attention to the sovereignist noise. ;)

The problem for poor Gilles is that he's witty and clever and funny in French, and speaks in a sometimes almost unintelligible whine in English. Not that he really cares, I'm sure, but it would be salutary for the Anglo population to hear what he has to say.

I have to read reams of Hansard (debates of the House) and House and Senate committee proceedings for my work, and also various parliamentary research and some party stuff, mainly in French, so a lot of Bloc. They're as annoying as any other party with their hobbyhorses, and they have their jerks on the benches like they all do. But in the last year I've just had a ball reading speech after speech in which one Bloc MP after another went on about the ideology-driven right-wing agenda of the government.

I'm concerned about how far the NDP will have to bend if we do take a lot of Quebec seats. Already Jack has decided to commit us to legislation that would remove Official Languages Act protection for federally regulated workers in Quebec (airlines, banks ...). The English-speaking minority would no longer have language of work protection. The whole deal since Trudeau has been protection for linguistic minorities (cynically, this was an effort to defuse and counterbalance Quebec nationalism by making the French fact not just a Quebec fact). The survival of Francophone minority communities outside Quebec, in all provinces, depends on these laws. "Asymmetrical federalism" may work for some things, but for something as fundamental as language rights, I dunno.

Hoping the rain will let up so I can go vote after 5 without drowning ...

I live in California and I'm not up to speed on your politics. So I want to ask is the voter turn-out in your country as bad as it is here? Basically what I'm asking, is the rottenness of our politics spreading to your country? :smoke:

The last several elections have been increasingly nasty, with physical intimidation of Liberal voters showing up in this and the previous federal election. The Conservatives' campaigns are basically entirely attacks and fearmongering, with a large dollop of Republican campaign strategists taking part, and the main plank of Harper's campaign through the campaign has seriously been "elections are dangerous and bad." Since the new Conservative party popped up in the past decade, federal elections have been getting uglier with each one.

Voter turnout is about on par with the US, except for the youth vote, which is somewhere between fifteen and thirty percent depending on the riding. The Conservatives have actively spoken out against youth voting a couple of times in this campaign.

I hope Stephen Harper's Conservatives are defeated.

Just drop in to any of the major media sites here:

www.cbc.ca/news
www.ctv.ca/news
www.thestar.com
www.theglobeandmail.com
http://www.montrealgazette.com/

This is your last day for opinion polls, as

http://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=med&document=mar2911&dir=pre&lang=e

"No new opinion survey results may be published on election day before polling stations close."

I'm on several on-line opinion research companies' "panels", and so far Ipsos has asked its panel members to log on immediately after voting and complete the survey we'll find in our inbox. A sort of electronic exit poll, I guess. ;)


Gotta say, for this a several-time "sacrificial lamb" NDP candidate, the outcome of this one -- with the possibility of actual absentee candidates being elected in Quebec! -- might not be tinged with just a touch of resentment. ;)

The last time that happened was 1984 when a load of Mulroney Progressive Conservative candidates were elected in Quebec who had only been on the ballot because nobody else would do it. At least I can't imagine equivalent NDP candidates this time around being as stupid and venal as many of them turned out to be!

The Globe and Mail is generally liberal in outlook, but has endorsed the Conservatives despite years of withering criticism of them. The comments are reactions to the endorsement. I probably read 100 or so. There might have been ONE that agreed with the endorsement.

It's "liberal" in the social sense, conservative in the political/economic sense.

And virtually all of its readers are lefties, I've always been sure! They delight in taking it to task; the letters to the editor page are always what I read first. ;)

We all read it because it is, after all, the newspaper of record ...


edit: the link

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/reader-reaction-to-the-globes-endorsement-of-stephen-harper/article2002191/

Many thanks to the neighbours for their "positive thoughts"! ;)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadavotes2011/story/2011/05/01/cv-election-campaign-final.html

'We can defeat Stephen Harper,' says Layton
CBC News
Posted: May 1, 2011 7:33 AM ET
Last Updated: May 1, 2011 4:32 PM ET

For the first time in this election campaign, New Democrat Leader Jack Layton says his party can defeat Stephen Harper's Conservatives.

... Harper kicked off the day with a rally in Stratford, P.E.I., where he touted his economic plan and blasted the surging NDP, saying their platform would lead to "billions and billions of dollars in job-killing tax hikes."

By day's end, he will have made stops in three time zones as he tries to build enough support to secure his first majority.

We listened to one of his speeches today. Lies and fear-mongering, zzzz.

A desperate attempt to get Liberal voters to vote Conservative to defeat the socialist-sovereignist Frankenstein's monster.

I guess we'll see Liberal voters' true colours tomorrow. ;)

Yikes!

But if not, or if you don't recall, google "wage and price controls".

Trudeau was "socially liberal", but despite his much-vaunted early hanging around with unions, he was economically right wing. To the extent that he gave a crap about the economy at all.

Of course, then there was the War Measures Act ...


Hardly authoritative, but sums it up:

http://ca.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080929185310AArpSDq

Trudeau's first two governments (1968-72 and 1972-74) did establish several new social programs and significantly increase public spending, but these reforms failed to mollify an increasingly combative working class. Meanwhile, the cuts Trudeau made to corporate and personal income taxes, at the bequest <sic> of big business, were placing an increasing strain on the federal treasury.

Trudeau won a landslide election victory in 1974, by claiming to oppose the Tories' plans to introduce wage and price controls for 90-days. But a little more than a year later he imposed wage controls for three years in order to break a rising wave of militant trade union struggles. Then in 1978, when postal workers defied strike-breaking legislation, his government, in a foreshadowing of Reagan's action against the 1981 air traffic controllers strike, threatened mass firings. Also in 1978, Trudeau ordered an emergency $2 billion program of public spending cuts.

In 1980, Trudeau again won election denouncing right-wing Tory policies, only to implement them himself. This time, he and the Liberals posed as opponents of a major increase in regressive gasoline taxes, but ultimately, albeit somewhat more slowly, the last Trudeau government (1980-84) implemented similar increases. In conjunction with the provinces, the Liberals also re-imposed wage controls, although this time only on public sector workers.

More importantly, mimicking the high interest rate policy pursued by US Federal Reserve Board Chairman Paul Volcker, the last Trudeau government deliberately drove up unemployment so as to bolster the corporate drive to slash wages. In December 1982 the official jobless rate reached 12.9 percent. The high interest rate policy also caused the cost of servicing government debt to soar. Under the combined impact of high interest rates and slump, the annual federal deficit rose in 1984 to $39 billion. Trudeau had been elected in 1968 on the pledge to establish a Just Society. But when he left office, cities across Canada were dotted with food banks for the first time since the Great Depression, and governments across Canada, most notably in Quebec and British Columbia, were slashing public services.