It's undemocratic because the extra funding was brought in to replace losses that would be seen when they placed limits on contributions to political parties. Even more so because it hurts the opposition parties to the extent of limiting their competition to Harper. The change at the least does not produce any positive effect on the election process and as far as saving money, $30 million is a drop in the bucket compared to savings that could possibly be found elsewhere.
It's win-win for the Conservatives. If it passes, he has a better chance of winning the next election and possibly bankrupting the Liberal Party. If it's defeated, he tries for a majority and the opposition is blamed for an election nobody wants. The one way he could lose is from lying about the recession and his intention to have a deficit and the fact that he hasn't really done much to help the economy. If anything he's made it worse according to one report I read.
It's undemocratic because the extra funding was brought in to replace losses that would be seen when they placed limits on contributions to political parties.
But under the proposed changes, everyone will have to abide by the same rules. It's not like there will be one set of rules for the Conservatives and another set for everyone else.
The way I see it, when Chretien was in power he played the right for chumps all the time because, between the Reform Party, the Tories and the United Altnernative(s) they couldn't get their act together. How is this any different? The Liberals are down, and Harper is kicking them. Any politician worth his salt would do the same. For what it's worth, the NDP has done a good job raising money from individuals - losing the public funding will hurt them, but it's not going to cripple them the way it will the rest of the opposition
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When political parties get money by relying on people to donate it, the people with the most money get the most say. Corporations get the most say of all. And the result is the United States.
When political parties get money on the basis of how many people vote for them, then it benefits them to try to represent the interests of a larger number of people, regardless of whether or not those people have money. And the result is Canada. Would you really prefer to be governed by a United States-style government instead?
As long as there's a cap on individual donations that's somewhere in the neighbourhood of, say, $1000 (the cap here is actually $1100), and as long as there are laws preventing corporations, unions and other non-people from making donations to political parties (and we also have those), I'm ok with getting rid of publicly-subsidized political parties, yeah.
Right now we have not one, not two, not three, but four political parties that to the left of centre on the spectrum and bleed votes and money from each other. This change will hurt them all in the short-term, but help the left boil itself down into one or two parties that can actually win government in the long-term. Also right now we have a federal political party whose sole raison d'être is the breakup of the country, and they get 83% of their annual budget from the federal taxpayer. That last thing
Given the other laws and other circumstances in this country right now, I don't think that repealing the funding is going to lead us towards the Republicrats anytime soon.
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It's win-win for the Conservatives. If it passes, he has a better chance of winning the next election and possibly bankrupting the Liberal Party. If it's defeated, he tries for a majority and the opposition is blamed for an election nobody wants. The one way he could lose is from lying about the recession and his intention to have a deficit and the fact that he hasn't really done much to help the economy. If anything he's made it worse according to one report I read.
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But under the proposed changes, everyone will have to abide by the same rules. It's not like there will be one set of rules for the Conservatives and another set for everyone else.
The way I see it, when Chretien was in power he played the right for chumps all the time because, between the Reform Party, the Tories and the United Altnernative(s) they couldn't get their act together. How is this any different? The Liberals are down, and Harper is kicking them. Any politician worth his salt would do the same. For what it's worth, the NDP has done a good job raising money from individuals - losing the public funding will hurt them, but it's not going to cripple them the way it will the rest of the opposition ( ... )
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When political parties get money on the basis of how many people vote for them, then it benefits them to try to represent the interests of a larger number of people, regardless of whether or not those people have money. And the result is Canada. Would you really prefer to be governed by a United States-style government instead?
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Right now we have not one, not two, not three, but four political parties that to the left of centre on the spectrum and bleed votes and money from each other. This change will hurt them all in the short-term, but help the left boil itself down into one or two parties that can actually win government in the long-term. Also right now we have a federal political party whose sole raison d'être is the breakup of the country, and they get 83% of their annual budget from the federal taxpayer. That last thing
Given the other laws and other circumstances in this country right now, I don't think that repealing the funding is going to lead us towards the Republicrats anytime soon.
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Sounds like a fantastic way to get the east/west tension thing going.
Harper needs someone to pull him aside and say "boy, wtf are you doing?"
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