These surveys and questionnaires still need to be taken with a grain of salt.

A question could be:

Do you want the government to hand you out more money for doing nothing:
Yes answer means party A as their platform promises free money like candy
No answer means party B as their platform promises fiscal responsibility


Without really asking if you think the government should be giving away money they don't have, and can't really get given their platform, you could be lead to believe you're a party A supporter, when in reality you're strongly a party B supporter.

Yup you can earn a high income and still not be a cunt, surprisingly enough

Its too bad for all the socially progressive fiscal conservatives that Harper's cons combined the right into one party. They knew they could never get elected a majority on their own and they knew the left would continue to split votes. My parent's dislike a lot of the social/environmental conservatisim of the Cons but they will never ever vote for Trudeau because of his father or the NDP because of the provincial NDP. Couple the move to a 2 party system initiated by the Cons, the attack ads, the campain finance reforms which just happen to benefit themselves, the voter registration reforms which just happen to make it harder for people who traditionally do not vote conservative, the robo calls, the quiet dismantling of the CBC from the inside out, and so on; it's beginning to look a lot more like the dysfunctional political system to the south.

I think that's how I ended up siding with the Libertarian party... Their platform seems to combine the 'good' parts of the right wing - economy, education, etc leaving out the 'bad' social and environmental parts. Meanwhile, they take the 'good' social side of the left wing, and leave out the more welfare state/socialism stuff.

To me, this is the best political platform. It's too bad it's basically a 2 party system, and voting for any small party means you're essentially throwing away your vote (or splitting it, if there are 3 parties competing)

^^ you should never worry about so-called vote splitting or strategic voting. always vote for YOUR ideal choice.

from 18 to about 30, I never voted for a winning candidate.

What my vote did, over time, was show a growing trend towards a certain ideology, which the governing party could not ignore.

Take the Green party for example. By a significant population voting for them, even though they had no chance in hell of winning, it made other parties change their environmental policies, due to the fact that it was 'suddenly' a hot topic for Canadians.

The questions are also likely to only cover issues that provide info that can be sold to marketing companies.

And none of them ever ask about firearms. Which essentially turns this election into a single issue election for a significant portion of the population as the NDP is very anti-firearms, and the liberals lean strongly towards giving more power to the RCMP to make up their own rules as they go.

I wouldn't say that a significant portion of Canadians are firearms owners, we are still a minority. That being said, the Conservatives are the only ones who are openly middle ground > supportive of firearms owners.

Which is a shame, since that site said I'm more Liberal than anything else, and I identify as such. (86% vs. 43% for conservatives.)

To your last point, I'd argue the exact opposite has actually occurred with the Conservative Party and Harper.

Crimes Against Ecology | A\J ? Canada's Environmental Voice

roughly 2 million licensed firearm owners in canada as per the rcmp figures as of december 2014.

if 2 parties openly said they would make firearm ownership difficult, and one said they would stand behind firearm owners, that 2 million becomes a pretty measurable percentage.

^ 8.3%, which is a decent amount, but you're assuming that all firearms owners hold that above every other aspect of government (which I still think is fucking daft).

Gotta love RS when a policy debate about something that affects maybe a few hundred thousand people overshadows discussion about the Mike Duffy trial.

To be fair, a corruption charge doesn't necessarily directly impact people's lives, whereas a law change does.

isn't that how most of politics work? a couple of hot button issues that pander to the most vocal group?

lgbt are like, 10% of the population and yet the marriage issue was huge

inb4 ulic and his wall of text

Because its only a matter of time beforr Duffy is found guilty, thats old news. When and if the bombshell that directly links with proof that Harper is involved, you can bet that will dominate the air wave.

My larger point is that people go apeshit when it comes to public sector inefficiencies, salaries, and art projects (which don't really have a direct impact on daily lives either), but are silent when outright an violation of public rules has occurred.

So Harper says he'll look into foreign home ownership. Doesn't mean he'll actually do anything but I just realized that if someone said they were going to tax the fuck out of people buying homes in Canada without living in them, I'd vote for that guy. That would swing my vote almost instantly.

I think he pleged 500k to try to track foreign ownership.
Video: Harper's pledge to collect data on foreign home ownership could chill Vancouver real estate market

Not only do I doubt that 500k is enough, I question why he hasn't done it for 10 years if it's truly a priority to him and not just an election topic that will be as easily forgotten as his senate reform pledges.

Yeah, Harper doesn't have it but if someone made it cheaper for us to buy homes by making it way more expensive for foreign investment, I'd be all for that guy.

Well, he could have kept the long-form census, for starters. Lots of useful data relating to incomes, ethnicity, education, and housing, was obtained in those surveys.

Keeping in mind The Conservatives made massive cuts to Stats Canada to track stuff like this, and massive cuts to CRA departments that tracked corporate tax evasion and offshore banking investigations.

His former tax advisor was caught stashing money offshore.

^ Who needs statistics and data to make decisions when you can rely on gut feeling and common sense about what's right?

Exactly. Like really? Federal policy making and thats the reason you give?

Food for thought:

There's a lot of criticism about countries that have a two party system when it comes to federal elections. The disadvantages are obvious as it creates a ton of voter apathy and allows for a narrower field of options when it comes inter-party cooperation. However, it seems like there's certainly a case for it.

When it comes to Canada, you vote Conservative if you lean right. There's really no viable second option. However, if you lean left, you have three main parties to choose from (NDP, Liberals, Green). This causes a massive split between votes. So theoretically the vast majority of the country could be left leaning, but when you split those votes between three parties, you're likely stuck with the right wing party still standing with the majority vote.

So what's the solution? Do we try and move to a two party system as well? Do we try and convince the lefts to join together and create one party that wont split the votes?

How do you fix the split votes?

Also, there's a problem when I'm more interested in the USA's federal election than my own.