What's going on politically in your country?

[Fashion Lad!]

Call me an ignorant American, if you must. You all know a lot about our politics and I know very little about your own.

What's going on politically in your country? I want to know. I'm not going to cruise every foreign news source because, I don't want to. I want to hear it from you.

If you can just state what country you're from and 1 or 2 of the hot button issues facing your country politically, I'd love that. I want to be able to research what's going on and learn about things abroad.

Thanks.

[BroomJockey]

Hi, my name is Broomjockey, and I'm from Canada.

The biggest issue in our politics is that the electorate doesn't want to face another election, but the leader of the Liberals keeps making noises that he wants to topple the Conservative Party's minority government every time he's got even a 1% lead in the polls. Each time he does, he injures the Liberal Party's standings. Since he only does it when the ratings are slightly in his favour, most people are starting to think he's an opportunistic weasel. This view isn't helped by the fact that before Harper, the two previous Prime Ministers were Liberal (Jean Cretien, and Paul Martin), and they lead pretty much by force of personality, while this guy's a blank slate.

[Fashion Lad!]

Conservative party's minority government??? I don't understand that at all.

[Gravekeeper]

Conservative party's minority government??? I don't understand that at all.

We have a multiple party system. If you can win a riding you get a seat. You don't have to be playing for one of the two big teams. So what's happened currently is the Conservatives have the most seats, but they do not have the majority of the seats. The remaining seats are divided between the Liberals, NDP and Bloc. So they're required to rely on convincing at least some members of the other parties in parliament if they want to pass anything. So everyone has to play nice. The other parties are also capable of triggering an election if they gang up on the minority Conservatives and push a vote of no confidence. Which is what the Liberals threaten to do half the time.

Canada provides political funding to parties and caps political spending. So being filthy rich doesn't really help you much here. Which has the added benefit of not just bombarding us with political ads and noise 24/7 for a year leading up to an election. It also allows smaller parties a fair chance.

I mean I could form my own political party if I wanted. Right now. -.-

[fireheart17]

Australian here! *wave*

From a state level I can tell you, that we run on a multiple party system as well-sort of. There are two main parties in Australia-the Liberal Party (also known as the Coalition due to the fact that they share seats with the National Party) and the Australian Labor Party. The minor parties are Family First (Christian-based from what I know), Greens (more environment focused) and I think there's a couple of other parties (apparaently there's an Australian Sex Party somewhere o_O). Usually I've noticed that elections seem to be more based on voting the lesser of two evils. Someone screw up education? Doesn't matter if the opposing party did the same when THEY were in power, we'll vote for the opposing party.

[lordlundar]

We have a multiple party system. If you can win a riding you get a seat. You don't have to be playing for one of the two big teams. So what's happened currently is the Conservatives have the most seats, but they do not have the majority of the seats. The remaining seats are divided between the Liberals, NDP and Bloc.

And just to elaborate on the parties:

Conservative Party: This party is to the right of the divide, though no where near as far right as the GOP. Heck, looking at it from the GOP point of view, our conservative party is further left than your democrats.

Liberal party: Now this is the Canadian equivalent to your democrats, or at least that would be the case if they actually focused on their job. As it stands, like your republicans, they're pretty bitter about losing power and keep trying to force an election to get back in.

NDP: Now this stands for New Democrat Party but they are anything but. If you want to show those GOP pundits a REAL socialist, have them look up Jack Layton, who leads this party. Their stance gets kinda fuzzy, Because every time Jack opens his mouth, it's "socialize everything!", but the rest of the party doesn't fully support that idea, though they do support more regulation.

Bloc Quebequois: Only exists in Quebec and I believe the Maritime provinces, They were formed for one purpose and one purpose only, to separate Quebec from the rest of the country. As it stands the party hasn't succeeded, and with the change from Liberal to Conservative parties, the push to separate has cooled down, though apart from that, no one outside Quebec really knows their stance.

There's also minor parties with particular agendas, though they usually can't get a seat in the house. The most succesful was the green party, pushing for environmental changes, though they wound up being more of a lobbyist group than a real political party.

The 4 major parties also have a provincial variant of the party (except the BQ outside of Quebec) and had several other parties over the course of the history of the country. While most provincial parties were formed independently from the federal version, the federal Liberal party actually formed up their provincial counterparts. Currently though, there is no direct link between the levels, though the party stances are similar.

[Gravekeeper]

The odd man out being the Green party. Which is our environmental leaning party. They've run in every riding in Canada just like the big name parties, but have yet to win a seat, unfortunately. Could stand to see some new blood in there.

[Lace Neil Singer]

England.

At the moment, politically, it's all "We hate Gordon Brown" and Lockerbie as far as I can tell.

[BroomJockey]

And just to elaborate on the parties:

And then there was formerly the Reform party, which may have actually been further right wing than the US Democratic party. However, one year, they decided they were splitting the right-wing vote between themselves and the Progressive Conservative party, so they voted to merge the parties and just be the Conservatives, and became rather moderate by comparison.

Also the Bloc Quebecois does have a provincial counterpart: the Parti Quebecois. Both are only in Quebec. If Ontario wanted, they could form a Bloc Ontario, due to the rules around it requiring a certain level of population and available seats in Parliament.

[Fashion Lad!]

Bloc Quebequois: Only exists in Quebec and I believe the Maritime provinces, They were formed for one purpose and one purpose only, to separate Quebec from the rest of the country. As it stands the party hasn't succeeded, and with the change from Liberal to Conservative parties, the push to separate has cooled down, though apart from that, no one outside Quebec really knows their stance.

I've heard about them and I laughed. I think they're funny. Probably because how they were originally explained to me.

We've established that your conservative party is possibly more left than our liberal party. So what do they argue for, "a lot of government control" vs "total government control"?

An Australian Sex Party... interesting. I looked up their website, not safe for work. But, interesting. They would be the porn lobbyist for America, I think.

[BroomJockey]

We've established that your conservative party is possibly more left than our liberal party. So what do they argue for, "a lot of government control" vs "total government control"?

No, it's mostly on how much money to spend on the control, and in what areas. More military vs. unemployment benefits, whether to prop up the CBC, enforcing Canadian Content Laws on streaming radio, that kind of thing.

Also, keep in mind Canada's not a coalition of 50 cooperating semi-autonomous entities (for instance, there's this thing called "transfer payments," where provinces with strong enconomies help out the weaker ones). The Federal government probably has a lot broader range of responsibilities than yours does, and about the same area to do it in, but with fewer people. Keep in mind, too, our political system actually has some flexibility to it, we're not a two-party country. And The Economist found us to be a more democratic nation than yours in their 2006 survey. So you can frame is as "government control," or as Canadians often do, "putting those lazy fucker politicians to work doing something useful." And in the meantime, we don't get shit like your copyright laws adopted instantly, instead sticking to the actual international copyright agreements. So, while your digital rights are being whittled away, we're actually working on expanding them. There's even open hearings where companies and the public can talk on the record about things, such as recent CRTC hearings on traffic throttling by ISPs. So while you're at the whims of whatever some damn company feels like giving you, and you'll fucking LIKE IT, MISTER!, we've got recourse to stem shitty behaviour. Doesn't always work, but our government actually has our best interests at heart. And you know why? The lowest voter turn-out we've had in the past 100 years is 58%. Usually it's in the high-60s, low 70s. Yours hasn't broken 64% since 1960, and it's usually a fair bit lower. And consider the gaps in population sizes. That means you have a whole lot more people not giving a crap about your government. So, you can bitch about your government, but we, as a nation, are doing our damnedest to the government we want. It's a basic psychological difference that I know you can't comprehend, because I've tried to explain it to a lot of "we want less government" types, and not a one's seemed to be able to grasp the idea that Canadians not only trust their government to basically get things right most of the time, but we like the security provided by our government handling facets of life, and that it's unlikely to be fucked with in a major way without the public having input, rather than stockholders. Canada and the US aren't really that much alike, so to simplify it down to "lots or total government control" doesn't do the complexity of the situation any good, nor the level that you should be able to handle, instead of just pointing and going "dumb people let the government run their lives."Doing so also doesn't actually convey the idea you'd like to be seen as not an "iggerant 'Merikan."

Election turn-out data:
http://www.elections.ca/content.asp?...turnout&lang=e
http://elections.gmu.edu/voter_turnout.htm

[Boozy]

Bloc Quebequois...no one outside Quebec really knows their stance.

As someone who's looked into their non-separatist platform, I have to say that I'm relatively impressed. They are socially liberal (especially coming from a predominantly Catholic province) and fiscally conservative. We could use a party like that outside of la belle provence.

[Fashion Lad!]

Also, keep in mind Canada's not a coalition of 50 cooperating semi-autonomous entities (for instance, there's this thing called "transfer payments," where provinces with strong economies help out the weaker ones).

I had to point this out, just right away. I'm tired. But I read that as basically people in Canada having 50 caliber semi-automatics. And, I was going to move to Canada.

Back to what you addressed in that long, long paragraph. We don't want our government to control our lives. But you have to remember what American came from. We revolted from Great Britain because we were being taxed without representation. The government was controlling nearly every aspect of our lives. Our country was really founded on the fact that we would not be controlled by our government. Our government would make sure we're safe, we could send mail to one another had the military to protect us. But as for the most part, we would be responsible for ourselves individually. This was not that long ago. This was 233 years ago.

I know Canada was is a very young country. You didn't have to fight for your separation like we did. We wanted everything to be completely different. While we're slowly heading down a path that's very similar to Great Britain, we're not there yet and it's going to a long, long time. Probably not in my life time. But, 233 years ago, we fought to have as little government control as possible.

I still want as little government control as possible. Americans for the most part are lazy. They don't care. They don't want to learn about politics. Some people think it's fine as long as they get their money. Or they're mad, but don't feel they can change anything. And then we have congress that is voting themselves more power. The Supreme Court is doing little to uphold the Constitution.

So acting completely shocked that some of us can't get it through our thick skulls that a lot of government control can be a good thing is simply wrong. We grew up learning history, being told this is the way we are. In a perfect world, America would be perfect and our government would do only as outlined in the Constitution.

[the_std]

So acting completely shocked that some of us can't get it through our thick skulls that a lot of government control can be a good thing is simply wrong. We grew up learning history, being told this is the way we are.

Except that more government control can be a good thing. Just because it didn't work out for you 233 years ago doesn't mean it can't work out for a lot of other places, or, in fact, for you guys if you do it correctly. You're not living in the same situation as you were back then. Change can be a good thing if you're willing to accept the possibility of it. I'm not saying that is necessarily the right path for you, but I laugh when I see Americans constantly deny it just because "We're Americans, damn it! That's not what this country was founded on and we will never, ever change!", because it just feeds right into the stereotype that has grown up around such mentalities.

In a perfect world, America would be perfect and our government would do only as outlined in the Constitution.

In a perfect world, every country would be perfect. So... What does that have to do with anything?

[Fashion Lad!]

Here's the thing. People are saying that more government control, let them control more, you'll be happier for it.

What if it were the other way around in your country? What if we were telling you that it can be so much better if you drastically change the way things are? I mention the 233 years because went from a near polar opposite from a country like Canada. 233 years isn't that long, really. Most of the change to our way of life happened around WWI (the last 100 years).

So, forgive me if I get freaked out about drastically changing everything. And maybe it's being nervous or scared, but that's the way it is. Rarely do people accept drastic change well. Why are people jumping down other people's throats because they don't want drastic change?

And I mention perfect worlds because I like to be optimistic when I'm full of Percocet. Let me have my dreams!