Pete's Viewpoint

In an article today, Justin McElroy builds a case that the NDP in attempting to reach out to voters in a fun and innocent 'dad joke' is doing something shady in requesting very simple contact information on their party built web page designed for this purpose. Lets be clear about a few things. After campaign finance reform that the NDP promised for three elections, we are now in a post reform era. No union, no corporate donations. Neither of the big parties (and none of the smaller parties) are allowed to take financial contributions from said organizations. Most of us think this is the right thing. This isn't to suggest that the law enabling such reforms is perfect, certainly it can take some tweaks to make it better, but that's the law nonetheless. Regardless, parties are now obligated to reach out and expand their base, accessible voter pools by whatever means are left. They all do it and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. Every party does this very basi...

Another election comes and goes, this time in Ontario, where well reasoned progressive values and ideals ran against populist conservative ideas and lost. Ontario just voted for a party and leader who pledged $1 beer, 10 cent/litre fuel price reduction, multi-billion dollar tax cuts that benefit the 1%; all are uncosted liabilities to the Ontario budget that poses a deficit and debt risk like none seen before. But, who cares about that, right? What Ontario is getting is a new regime that will shift to austerity to fund these promises; because the tax cuts pledged therein will not fund themselves. Doug Ford and his PC party campaigned on a trickle-down platform, and the mathematical fact is that trickle-down economics has never worked in the history of ever. NEVER. It won't magically work this time either. So, enjoy your $1 beer Ontario, its going to cost you teachers, nurses, highway maintenance, child protection services to start with. But none of that matters because now On...

There I said it. The current winner-take-all approach to elections in Canada (and USA for that matter) are responsible for the rise of extremist parties in our country. FPTP allowed that separatist BQ became Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition in 1993 with less than 14% of the vote, while the national, PC party with almost 17% landed only two seats. First Past the Post ("FPTP") gives power to regionalist, special interest parties where any form of proportional voting would give the proper weight to a party based on their actual vote share. Where extremist parties rise anywhere in the democratic world is because your mainstream parties fail to pick up on rising trends. Spikes in unemployment and income inequality are quickly seized upon by far right and left as evidence that the whole thing is broken; and the only path to salvation is to smash it to bits by voting for parties off the mainstream grid. Extremists always play this message, but in desperate times and little a...