Welp, hell is freezing over! Alberta set to elect the communists

My title is tongue in cheek. I clearly am a fairly conservative individual, but the corruption and cronyism was too much. Albertans have had enough. This has been the longest running streak of a political party in North America.

In case you don't know what the New Democratic Party is all about, well... Imagine your commie pinko stereotypes come true.

Interesting times over here in Canuckland. I voted NDP and I'm not ashamed of it. It is not necessarily an endorsement of their policies, but an endorsement of we, the Albertan populace, will not tolerate being berkeleyed with!

Um...congratulations???

In reply to petegossett:

What's that line about the lesser of two evils?

I don't even have any Albertan populace.

I thought Canada had a dictator...

How many refugees should we expect to flood the border?

In reply to bgkast:

Some folks might agree with you.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: How many refugees should we expect to flood the border?

Every single small business owner apparently... Even though their business tax rate of 3% doesn't change.

Giant Purple Snorklewacker wrote: How many refugees should we expect to flood the border?

In that case we really need to get working on that fence...

In reply to bgkast:

I thought they dethroned him years ago.

Nick_Comstock wrote: In reply to petegossett: What's that line about the lesser of two evils?

That's a weird thing about Canada. They have more than two political parties.

In reply to Keith Tanner:

So do we. How many in Canada have an actual chance of winning?

Keith Tanner wrote:

Nick_Comstock wrote: In reply to petegossett: What's that line about the lesser of two evils?

That's a weird thing about Canada. They have more than two political parties that have serious potential of winning.

Fixed

In reply to Nick_Comstock:

I looked it up, it appears they use "first past the post" just like the US. I wonder what the difference is there that doesn't lead to a 2 party system.

There have been some serious shakeups in Canadian politics in the past. The most spectacular federal was probably the 1993 election, where the ruling Conservative (yes, big C) party went from 156 seats to ... 2. Now that's a message from the populace. 2011 was pretty interesting as well, as the NDP managed to become the official opposition and a whole bunch of young, first-time politicians ended up with seats. Young as in some of them were still in university IIRC.

I think there are more shades of grey in Canadian politics than the hyper-polarized US setup. The automatic response to this is that Canada is heading in the same direction, but I think that's mostly because of the "everything used to be better back in the day" mindset, and the election results are showing it to be untrue.

One really big difference that I find interesting is that the Prime Minister is not elected separately from the House of Commons (roughly equivalent to the House of Representatives) like the US President is. Instead, the PM is the leader of the party that has the most seats in the House. So you don't vote for the PM and your representative separately. This means that you don't get the situation where the PM and the House are basically shutting everything down because they're on different sides of the ideological fence.

You do get minority governments sometimes. That's when the ruling party doesn't have the majority of the seats in the house. Two of the other parties can basically join together and overrule them. This can lock things up as nobody's got the freedom to push anything through, but it also means that the ruling party needs to get at least one of the other parties on their side to get anything done.

Are we talking REAL communists here, or just what righties call lefties like here in the US?

(Yes, many countries do have real commies, they generally don't do very well though.)

When are you guys going to vote Quebec out of the Union (or whatever)?

Good luck Alberta, you're gonna need it.

I hope you were all paying attention to what happened to British Columbia the last time we had an NDP government.

Explanation for the uncivilized savages

I had forgotten about Canada.

In B.C. The NDP is in the union's back pocket.

They only lost in the last election because their party leader (who was a convicted criminal) opened his mouth and told everyone that he was opposing some of the biggest construction projects in the province.

He pissed off the union voters and they went elsewhere in order to keep their jobs.

Doesn't compare with New York State USA.

BC elects the NDP from time to time. It's not so bad. Then people come to their senses and kick them back into the wilderness 4 years later. But last time they were in power in BC they raised the speed limits, and that in a Province with actual corners and hills, so don't abandon hope.

Alberta should simply secede and ask for admittance to the US.

stroker wrote: Alberta should simply secede and ask for admittance to the US.

Most Albertan's would agree we don't want any part in your broken systems like outrageous health care costs and education.

Forbes recently rated Canada as the 6th best country in the world to live in, and having traveled throughout Canada and the USA, I understand why.

Best news to hit Saskatchewan since we sent the NDP packing. Looking forward to a bunch of new head offices being built here.

Enjoy!