The campaign is still young, and if you haven’t made up your mind for sure yet, vote the most likely party.
While its certainly nice to have choice, I would hope the result of this poll will demonstrate the answer is pretty cut and dry.
Partisan politics aside, it all boils down to who you want to run the country: a lawyer or an economist.
www.taxpayer.ca
Gonna assume you are voting Conservative?
Conservative…hahaha they like the Americans too much for them to get my vote. I have to vote for the party i hate the least. and will actually win.
Basicly it come down to who you hate the least. But i like blue if that is an indication.
So you’re voting based on personality? Hmmm. Interesting.
Well this will be an election totally based on the candidates for me. I don’t agree with pretty much any of the Conservative’s platform. They do have many ideas that we would refer to as American, ie: longer jail sentences, business tax cuts.
The Liberal’s seem to have beliefs that are pretty similar to mine, but their culture of entitlement is just too much for me. But I’d still rather have them form the government over the Conservatives tho.
I like Jack Layton, he has done a lot for the NDP. I agree with many of their policies but a) they will never form the government and b) they have many great policies but lots of them aren’t very practical.
So parties aren’t going to be the deciding factor for me…
Maybe I’ll vote Green so they get my $1.75.
So you’re voting based on personality? Hmmm. Interesting.[/quote]
If the conservatives had won the last election i can garantee you that Canada would be in Iraq with the Americans, Fighting a war they cant win and will eventually be the countries demise. …IMAGINE IF THIS HAD HAPPENED!!! DO you really want Canada to be the target of terrorist attacks??? Think…The London subway bombings.
So as Crooked Paul Martin and his Liberals seem to be, i would still see him in power than Steven Harper. At least Paul Martin has the guts to sort of stand up to the Americans.
When I am making my decision I focus primarily on sound economic principles because above all else economics affect the average canadian more than any other policy.
I don’t let the rhetoric that every single party spews affect my decision. I look deeper into the issue to find the truth.
I don’t trust the Liberals at all though. Everytime you turn around they have proven themselves to be very un-Canadian, and let us, the people, down. I can’t give someone like that this kind of power.
And I agree the Conservatives have some policys I don’t agree with like funding a larger/stronger/more invoved military, lower taxes, and maybe they like the US to much. But they seem more interested in helping the people of Canada, keeping criminals in prison longer so they don’t just go do it again, helping small businesses/single mothers/old people hang on to more of there money since some of them need it more than anybody.
It’s hard to know what to do when you don’t 100% agree with any party, so it’s kind of like picking the lesser of 2 evils.
Ummmm…for the record, I don’t think Paul Martin did any standing up to the Americans. He wasn’t the Prime Minister then.
Let’s see how he is standing up to them now…
Softwood lumber?
Beef exports?
Criticising them for not signing onto the Kyoto accord when in fact the US CO2 emmissions have actually gone down while Canada’s has gone up!!!
I guess it does take guts to criticise our largest trading partner during an election to win votes at the expense of good trade relations.
Maybe you consider that guts but I consider it kind of short sighted and manipulative.
Every political party tells Canadians what they think will win them votes and for anti-Americans that means bashing Americans.
He made a pretty strong stance against missile defence when Bush was here earlier this year.
As for softwood lumber, he did do a lot of talking, which was unsuccsessful. But the States have failed to change even when numerous panels have decided what they are doing is illegal.
He did a mediocre job either way you look at it. But Harper seems to gung ho about improving our relations with the States so I don’t know if he would have even performed as well as Martin.
A vote for Harper is a vote for Hitler!
Well, perhaps not, but some of his policies make me cringe. I voted Liberal last time and I’ll likely do the same this time only because their policies (which is what you’re SUPPOSED to be voting for, not personality) agree the most with my world view. I’m not a fan of the sponsorship crap, but still. I don’t subscribe to the “devil you know” theory - I think if Harper would have spoken up a lot sooner and told people what his damn plan for the government was, his popularity would be a bit higher than it is now.
I like Jack Layton as a personality, but the NDP doesn’t know how to run shit. I lived in BC during the worst years of NDP rule there and they managed to turn one of Canada’s most vibrant economies into a bucket of crap in 3 years flat. Now think of the fast ferry fiasco with federal money at stake!
(For those that don’t know, the fast ferries were supposed to go from Van. to Van. Island faster than the standard ferries. They bought 3, ignored the experts that told them that they wern’t capable of ocean crossings, at a cost of 650 million, and ended up getting 28 million in scrap value from each ferry. They never even carried so much as one passenger.)
Specifics?
I agree and because of that I don’t trust the Liberals. They blow around in the wind, making and changing decisions almost daily. Doing whatever they think will make them popular for the short term, not thinking about the long term. Making stupid decisions and then when everyone complains, changing there mind while saying the reason they changed is because they think the decision was not the best one for Canada. Well, then why did they make it in the first place??
I want a party that is rock solid on their stance on major issues, not a leaf blowing around in whatever direction the current winds are blowing
Here are a few of the things that make Harper scary to some Canadians:
It was the Conservative party that urged the government to enter into
negotiations with the United States on BMD in the first place. We supported the decision to be involved in missile defence through last summer’s amendment to the NORAD treaty."
- Conservative leader Stephen Harper in a letter to the Ottawa Citizen March 04, 2005.
“Nay.”
- Conservative leader Stephen Harper voting against a motion urging the Canadian government not to participate in the US military intervention in Iraq, March 20, 2003.
“The time has come to recognize that the U.S. will continue to exercise unprecedented power in a world where international rules are still unreliable and where security and advancing of the free democratic order still depend significantly on the possession and use of military might.”
- Stephen Harper, May, 2003, speech to the Institute for Research on Public Policy.
“Thank you for saying to our friends in the United States of America, you are our ally, our neighbour, and our best friend in the whole wide world. And when your brave men and women give their lives for freedom and democracy we are not neutral. We do not stand on the sidelines; we’re for the disarmament of Saddam and the liberation of the people of Iraq.”
- Stephen Harper, Friends of America Rally, April 4, 2003.
“This government’s only explanation for not standing behind our allies is that they couldn’t get the approval of the Security Council at the United Nations - a body [on] which Canada doesn’t even have a seat.”
- Stephen Harper supporting the American invasion of Iraq, CTV’s Question Period, March 30, 2003.
“It is inherently dangerous to allow a country such as Iraq to retain weapons of mass destruction, particularly in light of its past aggressive behaviour. If the world community fails to disarm Iraq, we fear that other rogue states will be encouraged to believe that they too can have these most deadly of weapons to systematically defy international resolutions and that the world will do nothing to stop them.”
- Stephen Harper supporting the American invasion of Iraq, House of Commons,
March 20, 2003.
“It was probably not an appropriate term, but we support the war effort and believe we should be supporting our troops and our allies and be there with them doing everything necessary to win.”
- Stepehen Harper supporting the US-lead war on Iraq, Montreal Gazette, April 2nd 2003. Harper also called then-Defence Minister John McCallum an “idiot.”
“I don’t know all the facts on Iraq, but I think we should work closely with the Americans.”
- Stepehen Harper, Report Newsmagazine, March 25th 2002.
“This party will not take its position based on public opinion polls. We will not take a stand based on focus groups. We will not take a stand based on phone-in shows or householder surveys or any other vagaries of pubic opinion… In my judgment Canada will eventually join with the allied coalition if war on Iraq comes to pass. The government will join, notwithstanding its failure to prepare, its neglect in co-operating with its allies, or its inability to contribute. In the end it will join out of the necessity created by a pattern of uncertainty and indecision. It will not join as a leader but unnoticed at the back of the parade.”
- Stepehen Harper indicating that, if elected, Canada will join the US occupation of Iraq, Hansard, January 29th 2003.
From the people I have talked to, the Iraq war doesn’t have alot of support in Canada. Support is there, but I don’t think that’s what the majority of Canada wants. In the last quote he throws out the validity of opinion polls. Not listening to the public is a pretty risky move for a politician.
Someone mentioned Harper’s policy on mininum sentences. That sure as hell hasn’t worked in the States. I think it would overload an already cramped justice system.
On the other hand, Paul Martin’s hangun control is just about as useless, in my opinion. Remember what prohibition of alcohol did in the states? More underground trading of illegal weapons isn’t going to help the country much. The majority of violence we see in Canada doesn’t have much to do with guns in the first place. It’s going to be hard to ban all kitchen knives, baseball bats and blunt objects.
Hmmmm. I think there could be considerable debate on this more suited for a beer or two rather than a car furum
My position is that war is dumb and should be avoided at all costs. If Canada said, we are with you in Iraq, I wonder what practical involvement we would have had. We were already over committed in Afghanistan so I am not sure we really had much more to contribute. For the record we also did have Canadian troops on the ground in Iraq with US units. People seem to forget that. We also have JTF2 (Canada’s version of the US Special Ops) working side by side with the US in Afghanistan that people also seem to forget. I honestly think agreeing to stand with the Americans would have been nothing more that a gesture. Canada is already on the hit list of Al Qaeda.
Having said that I have no problem with Canada staying out of the war, in fact, I favour it. I just wish we would have done it with some character. I don’t care if the UN security council said it was a good thing or a bad thing to go into Iraq. Canada shouldn’t have had such weak knees on this. We should have assessed our own position and made our own decision to go or not to go based on our own well considered foreign policy.
If anyone remembers from the last election Gilles Duceppe said, and I paraphrase, 'let’s first decide what our foreign policy is and then that will tell us what our Canadian military should look like". Right now the PMO just commits troops to this or that on a whim and a hunt for public approval. To me, that is scary especially when we are talking about actual lives of actual people.
More to the point, the dicussion of Iraq is kind of moot now since that is in the past and we also do not have the military to do anything in Iraq in the near future. The American’s really stepped in the poop and I don’t see any Canadian governenment, regardless of the party in power, deciding to go to Iraq now. I also don’t seem them pulling out of Afghanistan either.
About Harpers commitment to invest more in the military… The Liberals have already committed to doing the same.
I think the choice of a future governement should be made on a broader scope rather than just Iraq.
You know what, the gun issue is just so pointless. As Dave said, criminals do NOT use registered firearms - making the gun registry pointless and a joke. And what of all the people that enjoy their handguns in sport/range settings? Are we not tromping on their rights to enjoy their guns as well?
As for policy, if you think that politicians aren’t swayed by opinion polls, you’d be dead wrong. I don’t care what Harper says, he WILL listen to the pollsters. Frankly, I don’t think it matters - Harper has proved himself to be a pretty impotent leader and once the PC lose this election I’m relatively sure that he will be replaced.
As I said before, I don’t really like what the Liberals have done in the past, but they seem to be the best choice for me. As for their “waffling” and opinion changing, well, why is a person allowed (and even encouraged) to do that same thing but a government is not? It seems that people forget that a “party” is made up of people, all with their own free wills to do within reason as they please. Election promises are a joke - read their policy handbooks and decide which one agrees the most with you.
I think the only way to resolve this situation is a more direct democracy, where we have regular voting on issues in which the people of Canada can participate. It isn’t the ideal, obviously, but until it happens you will always have to deal with a modicum of corruption and governmental self-serving. The PC won’t be any different that the Libs on that front, anyway.
So you’re voting based on personality? Hmmm. Interesting.[/quote]
hahaha sounds to me like he’s voting baised on color…