Inkless Wells

Paul Wells on all the latest out of Ottawa—along with the occasional post about jazz. Follow Paul on Twitter: @InklessPW

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Against strategic voting

by Paul Wells on Sunday, October 12, 2008 8:17pm - 0 Comments

Elizabeth May could perhaps use reinforcements, so the leader of the Ontario Greens makes the argument with more verve than she has managed: even if your Green vote was the one that ensured a Harper re-election, you should still vote Green.

I just can’t help wondering whether, if the case were put that starkly, May would agree. Certainly John Barber, the Globe columnist who thought it unconscionable that New Democrats might prefer their own party to the Liberals, would not like what Frank de Jong argues here.

Tags: Election Watch, Green is the new Green

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http://mikewatkins.ca/2008/10/08/harper-government-running-deficit-now/ Michael Watkins

Style says: “When 70 to 80% of Canadians don’t want to vote for you, I guess the best strategy is to ask them to support you as a way to vote against the other guy…”

Following in your footsteps then we can say 85 to 91% don’t want to vote for the Greens. How does that float your boat?

In that light suddenly it seems logical to consider using those votes to influence a better electoral outcome than allowing a party and leader which have for years fought against even recognizing climate change as an issue, and are acting as if they never plan to address the problem.

Here’s the real problem with Harper. He is systematically dismantling the ability of the federal government to do anything on a broad national scale by reducing its fiscal capacity. Every big tax cut and little tax give away whittles down Canada’s future ability – regardless of who is in power – to do anything meaningful.

Harper in a minority can do this. He’s not gone all populist on us just for electoral reasons – he’s doing it because giving tax dollars back to people (and corporations) is hard to fight against. It doesn’t sell.

In the future Canada won’t be a headwaiter to the provinces because there’ll be nothing on the menu.

I happen to believe that we’ll face great challenges as a nation that require us to act as one nation.

Harper simply believes that its ok to have as a result 10 little Canada’s with their own destinies instead of a shared future for all in one big Canada.

Environmentalists betting on a minority government hobbling Harper are living in a dream world. You’d think they’d already have realised that by now, but apparently not.

Bottom line: If Harper regains control of parliament and keeps it, by the time a real “green” leadership is in place to replace Harper in one or two elections, it’ll be far too late.
Jarrid

Micael, Canadians are electing Harper again because they thing they can spend their money better than the government can. Harper’s been pretty clear about his approach and the people approve.

He also believes that Canada is a federation, which it is. Different parts of the country can have different approaches to problems. So Quebecers don’t have to have the same legislative solutions on areas of jurisdiction that are in their purview. That helps to convince Quebec that they can be part of Canada but pursue their own solutions in there areas of legislative competence.

That’s why sovereignty is way down now Michael.
http://ADMS.ca cms

Jarrid, you’re right.

I can definitely spend my money better than Mr. Flaherty can. For starters, I wouldn’t drain my savings before a recession.
Archangel

Jarrid,

Grow up. Harper has been the government for 2-plus years. He is a rank amateur.

You will vote for him because you too are naive.

Stop believing fairy tales. Your hero has no clothes.
Archangel

And Jarrid, ponder this…

“As you grow older you will find that day follows day and there does not seem much change in you, till suddenly you hear people talking of you as an old man. It is the same with an age in history; day follows day, and there does not seem to be much change, till all of a sudden it turns out that the age has become old. It is finished; it is passé.” – Leo Tolstoy

The ideas you hold dear were in the bathroom when your guy became Prime Minister; they were flushed down the toilet last week.
seaandthemountains

Mike Moffat; pls check this out….

http://www.publicpost.ca/2008/10/vote-desired-effect/
Style

“When 70 to 80% of Canadians don’t want to vote for you, I guess the best strategy is to ask them to support you as a way to vote against the other guy…”

Following in your footsteps then we can say 85 to 91% don’t want to vote for the Greens. How does that float your boat?”

Great, let’s all vote Green to stop the Conservatives *and* the Liberals. I already promised the NDP incumbent in my riding my vote though, so you guys carry on without me.
Sisyphus

I checked with my wife.

She says we can’t spend our money better than the gummint can.

She got a hole-in-one today.

She knows.
Andrew

It’s a fallacy to suggest that Harper’s election means that Canadians agree with his philosophy or particular policies. Only a third cast votes for his party, and many of those were due to fatigue with Liberal rule, not agreement with Conservative values. Hence the CPC wanting to appear to be governing as Liberals. They can’t govern like Conservatives because they’d be turfed (unless they get that handy majority they’re dying for).
hosertohoosier

Michael Watkins argued “Here’s the real problem with Harper. He is systematically dismantling the ability of the federal government to do anything on a broad national scale by reducing its fiscal capacity. Every big tax cut and little tax give away whittles down Canada’s future ability – regardless of who is in power – to do anything meaningful.”

Okay, so lets say some grand national project comes up that we just HAVE to HAVE. Why can’t we raise taxes then? Why are tax cuts irreversible? The funds Harper has devolved to the provinces are almost negligible – I believe he threw about 15 billion at the fiscal disequilibrium. Oh no the sky is falling. Anything that would actually transfer jurisdictional control would probably require a constitutional amendment, which I am sure Harper would just love to shoot for.

What is Harper’s record on that front anyhow? Oh yeah… anti-Meech, pro-Clarity Act, pro-eliminating interprovincial trade barriers, and pro-defence spending (the one jurisdiction that will always be federal). He gets flack for not holding enough federal-provincial meetings – think, my dear fellow, with your head and not your heart.

Moreover, you have no perspective. What – be specific – powers to you believe he is going to transfer? How much money is involved, and how does it compare to the MASSIVE INCREASE IN PROVINCIAL POWER IN THE 1960′s? What evidence do you have that he will do so? Even if the government transfers tax points, why can’t they just raise the taxes they do control to pay for some immensely useful grand national project?

Conservatives get a lot of flack for not being the party of thinking men. I can take a punch, there are dumb Conservatives. But actually having to defend one’s positions can be good for the soul. So I ask those of you quaking in fear over the barbarians in the lobby (they broke through the gates in 2006) in hysterical tones, to actually defend your criticisms (and no an appeal to authority is not an argument – I don’t care that 150 economists signed a paper saying they liked Dion’s green shift, I’d wager you could find 150 professors of anything to endorse anything proposed by either of the two major parties. The key though is what is the argument – why does it work? What if economists generally favour the Liberals for reasons other than the soundness of their economic policies?*).

*Eg. the federal government is one of the largest (if not the largest) employers of economists in Canada. Dion’s own (1997) book argues that under the Liberals are great for civil servants, increasing pay and civil service hiring at twice the rate** of the Conservatives).

**And remember that with compounding the difference is of an order of magnitude.
T. Thwim

hoser: Why can’t we? Because when we need it, it’s too late. Since the conservatives have run a deficit for the six of the last seven months, should we actually need money in the kitty for something, say to bail out one of our own banks, or in case of natural disaster or something like that, the conservatives have drained the bank. The money simply isn’t there.

That means they either borrow it, and we all pay the interest for it, or they just print it, as the US is doing, and run the risk of spiking inflation.

Now, why is the green shift good policy? Because these market rumbles are short term. The growth and increasing energy demand of china and india is anything but. Unless we start working on energy saving technologies now, we’re going to be in competition with these rising tigers very soon, and their populations mean that even with a much lower GDP, they’ll be able to seriously impact the market prices for energy.

So, we have a choice. We start learning to save energy now, with the Green Shift providing incentive to people and businesses not only to save, but to find new technologies and methods that can be sold to the chinese and indians to help curb their energy demands as well.

Incidentally, this is also an example of a grand national project that if wait until we HAVE TO HAVE it, it’s too late because, technology takes time to develop.
T. Thwim

Or the other half of the choice: We wait, and when market prices shoot skyward, bitch and moan that our standard of living is dropping because we can’t afford to purchase our own energy and haven’t developed the technology or lifestyles that let us live on less.

In short.. we’re already falling down the energy hole. We can either try to slow our fall, which have some painful effects as we do, or we can continue on as the “conservatives” would have us do, because hey, things seem fine right now.

It’s not the fall that kills you though..
..it’s the sudden stop at the end.
Peter

T. Thwim, as the country with either the largest or second largest hydrocarbon reserves on the planet, as energy prices rise, the precious government is swamped with revenue. Where do you think the massive surplusses of the last 8 years came from? Oil and gas. Nova Scotia has one offshore energy project, and it is the provincial governments third THIRD! largest revenue source. The federal government also gets a large piece of that pie. Canada is one of the world’s largest exporters of energy, high market (not tax driven) energy costs increases Canada’s wealth. As China and India and the USA grow, they purchase our energy which transfers their peoples wealth to our people, and the more it costs, the more we get.
http://ladygodivasnflpicks.blogspot.com/ veronica gipp

I am a resident of Canada, but not a citizen and can’t vote. But, here is my tuppence anyway.

It’s beyond me how any Canadian can consider wasting their vote on the Green Party when Dion is the Liberal leader.

Please, good people of Canada, vote for the Liberals and rid yourself of Stephen Harper. He’s no better than a common gangster. Over the past few years, he and his cronies have been accused of:

offering a financial bribe to a sitting Member of Parliament to change his vote

deliberately perpetrating a fraudulent scheme to evade election financing laws while hypocritically campaigning to clean up government after the Liberals had used government funds to finance their 1997 and 2000 campaigns

fixing the mayoral election in Ottawa, Canada’s capital

I admit that the Liberals under Jean Chretien, the Prime Minister from 1993 to 2003, were corrupt and deserved their defeat in 2006. But, we have now replaced one corrupt regime with another just as rotten.

Stephane Dion is a good man. His plan to introduce a carbon tax is the right thing to do.

I should say that I myself am a small c conservative raised in Britain during the great days of Margaret Thatcher.

Stephen Harper was and is an intelligent man and a good conservative. Sadly, he has turned out like Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars saga. Anakin Harper came to Ottawa as a young man determined to combat the Liberals and set Canada on a free market path. He grudgingly grew to admire Chancellor Chretien’s wily ways of never getting caught and morphed into Darth Harper, a monster who cares only about wielding power and crushing his opponents.
http://demosthenes.blogspot.com Demosthenes

H2H, How ridiculously short-sighted do you have to be to think that “I shouldn’t strategic vote, because one vote doesn’t matter” and not think of the thousands (millions?) of other people making the same decision?

That’s almost as dumb as using 4-chan lines like “oh noes” in a (theoretically) serious political discussion.

Oh. Wait. “Style.” Right.

(Well, at least now we know that Style is one of those ridiculous college Republicans who confuses his own swaddled comfort with the best interests of the grown-ups.)
http://demosthenes.blogspot.com Demosthenes

As for Dejong or whatever his name is, if he thinks his “unique political philosophy” is more important than actually choosing who the government will be, he deserves the obscurity he will undoubtedly receive.
Style

Demosthenes – thanks for the shout-out. I thought this was pretty good for a serious political discussion: “how ridiculously short-sighted do you have to be to think that “I shouldn’t strategic vote, because one vote doesn’t matter” and not think of the thousands (millions?) of other people making the same decision?”

Just so it’s clear, are you saying that an individual’s voting decision somehow changes the voting decisions of thousands of others? That’s right up there with my very serious suggestion that we all agree to go vote Green.
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