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Originally posted by bhootnath
If you look at the vote share percentage, conservative vote precentage pretty much stayed same..but the non conservative votes got divided amont NDP and Liberal..Liberals were lost due to NDP eating out their votes and vice versa..

Party Vote Share %
Con 39.62%
NDP 30.62%
LIB 18.91%

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this is misguided.
our system is not based on popular vote but seats.
Conservatives got 54% seats.

this system is not unique....India has a similar system, surely you recall.
even other countries like UK have similar system.

even the mighty US doesn't have a full popular vote based system.
if you recall, Al Gore got more popular vote than George W. Bush but Bush became president.

if you don't like the ystem, please feel free to lobby your elected MP to initiate a change in constitution.

but don't whine that Harper didn't "win".
he won hands down, fair and square.

if you still want to talk about populate vote...here's what that reveals :
people indicated by their votes that they are sick and tired of the insipid, directionless liberals that have done nothing other than hamper the smooth functioning of parliament.
right from Stehpane Dion and now Ignatiev they have interfered at every step, they have always put up roadblocks.
i am certain the liberals have a lot of soul searching to do.
they need to re-examine their whole stonewalling strategy of the last 5 years.

parroting to the fears and emotions of immigrants can only get you so far, so long.

the other thing the popular vote makes clear as bell is that the bloc is routed.
the bloc is a divisive, anachronistic party that has long outlived its relevance.
duceppe is a quasi terrorist and had Canada not been a peaceful democratic country, duceppe would have been no different than the punjab or kashmir separtists.
the bloc is essentially equal to the Akali Takht.

but quebeckers have voted to wipe them out.

i am surprised that no one among you is seeing the true danger here.
you are talking about the dangers of a majority conservative govt but are missing the true shift from yesterday's vote.
it is what Layton has done to the NDP to become the official opposition.
the NDP used to be a national leftist party, with the caucus split evenly across the country.
now > 50% of their caucus is from Quebec.
so whose interests are they going to represent?
yours in ontario/BC/AB or that of QC?

and think about what all he has gone about promising to QC in exchange for this thumping vote?
he has promised full implementation of Bill 101.
He has promised re-opening the constitution signing debate.
he has promised larger transfer payments.

Layton, like the Scorpion King, has made a deal with Annubis.
Quebec gave him the seats he could not get anywhere else.
and now he will speak for their interests instead of the Bloc.
The NDP is the new Bloc.

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Originally posted by DesiBabu70
this is misguided.
our system is not based on popular vote but seats.
Conservatives got 54% seats.

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Hold your horses cowboy....Not at all trying to misguide or not proposing any change in system....The voters who wanted a change, all they really did was to moved from Liberal to NDP...whoever voted for either NDP or Liberal did so because they did not like Conservatives...so despite this number who do not like conservative is high still Conservatives won majority..so this shift from Liberal to NDP, really benefitted Conservatives because voters who opposed conservative got thei votes divided....that does not mean that conservatives did something wrong...oh well...

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Originally posted by sanchita

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Originally posted by homer729

Nonsense, a minority government kept Harper in check. Keeps politicians on their toes and prevents them from doing whatever they want out of fear of an election. You can expect the following things as a result, many of them to be passed very soon.

1) Canadian DMCA. New laws may even force ISPs to reveal their customers' identities to RIAA/CRIA/MPAA.
2) Goodbye any hope of net neutrality! No CRTC reform, for sure. Harper loves his Bell and Rogers ex-VPs that sit on the CRTC. Canada will continue to have the most expensive and poorest phone/internet infrastructure in the developed world.
3) More people going to jail for marijuana, wasting taxpayer money
4) Immigration cutbacks. Have to make sure no more dirty desis clog up hospital waiting rooms!
5) Private prisons, along with needless laws that will increase the number of people going to jail. Prison as a place for rehabilitation instead of punishment? Oh you can forget about that. That's not the conservative way!

Very disappointed in Canada today.

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Did you have anything different in Liberals rule? Didn't we have only Bell, Rogers and Telus? Don't you want criminals to go to jail? Do you want to them to hover around your home and your children? Have you ever been inside the hospitals? Patients are waiting hours to see a doctor and you want them to wait longer? Do you want old parents and grandparents to die without medical treatment? Mindless immigration will lead to this.

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Okay I'll bite.

1) Yes, we had only Bell, Rogers and Telus. However, if you look at http://www.openmedia.ca/survey" target="_blank">http://www.openmedia.ca/survey</a>, you can very clearly see that the Conservatives have the poorest open media platform. Sure, the Liberals could have done something about it when they were in power, but when they were back in 2006, the issue of usage-based billing, ridiculous bandwidth caps (have you checked the internet plans available recently - $5/GB for overage use? what the hell?) simply were not on the horizon. I remember a few years ago when Bell Sympatico had unlimited internet plans for $39.95. Now we pay more for less service, and have few, if any, competitors.

2) No, I do not want 20-year olds to go to jail for smoking a joint. Calling such people \"criminals\" is just foolish. I do not want young girls in East Vancouver who ran away from home and are sex slaves to their pimp masters to be thrown into jail and waste their young years with little hope for rehabilitation. I do not want funding to be cut to women's centers and to Planned Parenthood. Yes, crime is a social ill and we need to fix it. However, building more jails and passing more laws to appear \"tough\" on crime, does not address the roots of these problems. It only makes soccer moms feel better. The way to address these is to broaden the social safety net, not cut it. Want proof? Compare the quality of life in Scandinavia to the United States.

If I have to pay a little extra to live in a society that cares about its neighbors, I am okay with that. The social democratic welfare state is one of the greatest achievements of human civilization. It is a tragedy that corporations are trying their best to convince us otherwise, and are succeeding in this campaign.

3) Yes, I have been inside busy Toronto-area hospitals. I did research in one for several months. In fact, I have even waited all night from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. in the emergency room, waiting for my mother to get treated as she was assigned a very low triage level. Sure, I was very angry at the time. However, now that I think about it, we should not have gone to the emergency room for her condition.

There are things that need fixing in our system - certainly. Build more MRI/Xray/outpatient facilities, recruit more doctors, build more medical schools, more hospitals. However, moving to a private model or a two-tier model makes no sense. A two-tier model will inevitably leave the public half understaffed and underpaid. A private model will lead to the creation of twenty private, for-profit insurance companies that are all doing the job that one single payer (currently the state) can do. Waste of money.

The idea of having to be employed just so that you can stay healthy benefits no one other than corporations. And saying old people are just dying in our hospitals left and right is just a gross lie. Back it up with facts.

Before you bring up the recent story of Baby Joseph, I support the decision that the doctors made. It does not make sense to spend absurd amounts of money, from the taxpayers' pocket, to prolong the life of a terminally ill baby by a few minute fractions of its lifespan. Of course the American hospital was more than willing to treat the baby, as a religious organization was able to milk its donors for the money, who don't have their priorities straight. In the USA, the family would have most likely not even able to afford the procedure in the first place, and have had to declare bankruptcy if they tried!

4) I am fine with our immigration system the way it is. There is no need to cut family immigration quotas even further, as Harper is clearly intent on doing. Yes, any welfare state cannot have completely open borders, or its social support system will collapse. However, cutting immigration quotas is hypocritical for a wealthy country made up almost entirely of immigrants. You got here first, so now you get to tell people to GTFO?

Okay, now that we got those out of the way.

- Why do the Conservatives have a reputation of being fiscally smart? They are in fact very good at turning surpluses they inherited into deficits!
- Why does Harper get any credit for steering Canada from complete economic collapse? That was largely due to regulations being in place from long ago that prevented Canadian banks from giving out subprime loans and issuing mortgage-backed securities, and due to Canada's economy relying to a greater extent on natural resources.
- Blowing a billion dollars on the G20 summit, violating civil rights, building an artificial lake - does no one remember?
- Proroguing parliament - In Dec 2009, Harper asked the GG to \"prorogue\" parliament, in effect shut it down temporarily for a few months so that he could run away from a vote of non-confidence. This was disgusting and incredibly anti-democratic. Yes, the Liberals also used it in 2002, but keep in mind that they aren't in power right now. Harper is.
- Why do we need to spend billions on new fighter jets? Who are we fighting against?
- The Bev Oda corruption scandal, being held in contempt of parliament, and Harper gets rewarded with a majority?

To the poster that asked me sarcastically \"ARE YOU SCARED?\" when I wrote about ISPs colluding with the CRIA/MPAA/RIAA -- it is easy to assume that only evil pirates need to worry (and by extension, that I am such an evil pirate). However, the issue of net neutrality is one we should care a lot about, especially in an era when the big internet service providers are owned by giant media conglomerates. Already, we see plans being offered where Bell does not count the bandwidth used from its own streaming services. One can easily imagine a future where packets are prioritized, with content providers having to pay ISPs for their packets to reach consumers faster, etc. An open internet is essential for the future of our democracy. Others have written far more eloquently about this than I. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_neutrality</a> for an introduction to this if you care.

A truly neutral network requires legislation - it will never arise out of a free market as it works against the interests of big corporations that own both content delivery services and ISPs.