David Cameron and the Spitzenkandidaten Remember The Cullen Plan for pre-election electoral cooperation between the NDP and Liberals? He advocated a deal which enabled one candidate to run against the sitting Conservative MP, rather than splitting the vote and letting the Tory win, which is the reason Harper is in
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CuriosityCat: Is Justin Trudeau trying to win the big enchilada on his own?
Justin Trudeau’s Big Enchilada? This extract from The Vancouver Courier just about sums up the fate of electoral reform’s future right now: Political cooperation isn’t a new concept, but University of B.C. political science professor Philip Resnick says it’s worth noting that in both the NDP and Liberal leadership campaigns,
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Joyce Murray’s electoral reform proposals are the most democratic of all leadership hopefuls
Joyce Murray – She walks the talk Joyce Murray’s electoral reform proposals are the most democratic of all candidates for leadership. Unlike the others who are simply practising old-style top-down command politics, Joyce is actually walking the talk of participatoty democracy in the party. Her pre-election cooperation idea leaves the
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Justin Trudeau, read Andrew Coyne if you are a bold, serious leader
Andrew Coyne The debate is gathering steam, and Andrew Coyne has posed several questions which every candidate for leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada (and particularly Justin Trudeau, whose father modernized the Canadian democracy almost beyond compare with his priceless gift of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms): Fundamentally,
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Liberal leadership race: Liberal-Green pre-election ceasefire could prevent Harper majority in 2015
MP Elizabeth May MP Joyce Murray was interviewed by the Canadian Press on the possibility of a pre-election electoral cooperation taking place in ridings that choose to do so before the 2015 election. Joan Bryden’s interesting article on the interview includes this comment on the extraordinary significance that such cooperation might
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Joyce Murray to Justin Trudeau: What’s YOUR plan to ensure Stephen Harper is removed in 2015?
What is YOUR plan to remove Harper? Joyce Murray rocked Justin Trudeau with a sharp, hard question during the only real tussle between the nine candidates for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada at last night’s first debate of the LPC primary election campaign. Standing side by side,
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Missing info in Angus-Reid poll about "cooperation" of LPC and NDP
Thanks to Angus-Reid for their latest poll, but there is a critical piece of information concerning pre-election electoral cooperation and post-election electoral cooperation which the firm does not reveal, but which could meaningfully influence people’s take on the poll results. This is the Angus-Reid summary of the results on the
Continue readingCuriosityCat: MP Joyce Murray to kickstart the Canadian debate on electoral reform tomorrow
Joyce Murray – Reformer Tomorrow MP Joyce Murray will be given the chance to kickstart what could be the most important public discussion in Canadian politics in two decades, when she debates the other candidates for leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada. Susan Delacourt has an interesting (and must
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Liberal Leadership Race: Joyce Murray’s Electoral Reforms Promise
Joyce Murray – Progressive Reformer MP Murray’s position on pre-election cooperation between the Liberal, NDP, Green and Blog parties in order to remove Harper’s right wing government from power, and her commitment to serious electoral reform, bears repeating in full: Our principal challenge is to give Canada the 21st century
Continue readingCuriosityCat: The Joyce Murray Cooperate First, Reform Later Plan’s advantages
The Undemocratic Democracy Recent byelections have once more proved that The Power Trap has the leaders of two of the opposition parties firmly in its grip. The State of Play post Calgary Centre Byelection Some recent reflections on the divided opposition parties: Yet most Liberals here still see other parties
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Joyce Murray is right: Our electoral sytem is broken and needs fixing
Joyce Murray: Targeting our democratic deficitAndrew Coyne has supported Murray’s idea of removing the Harper Tories from power and reforming the electoral system.This is a brief report of what Joyce Murray said, by Joan Bryden:But her proposal for co-…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Andrew Coyne gives a good reason for choosing Joyce Murray as Liberal Party leader
Andrew CoyneAt last we have some candidates for leadership of the Liberal Party who – unlike Justin Trudeau – are prepared to deal with the reality of Canadian politics: our democratic deficit. And journalist Coyne does us all a favour by dis…
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Why Justin Trudeau is running for leader of the Liberal Party of Canada
Justin Trudeau & hard work Very interesting article in Macleans – an interview with Justin Trudeau: “Can I actually make a difference? Can I get people to believe in politics once again? Can I get people to accept more complex answers to complex questions? I know I can. I know
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Should we choose David Merner as new leader of the Liberals, over Justin Trudeau?
Little seedlings of support for David Merner as the next leader of the LPC are sprouting up. Three seedlings Dan Arnold of the National Post has this to say about Werner: I’ll reserve judgment until I meet the man, but Merner does meet three of the requirements on the official
Continue readingCuriosityCat: The Cullen Plan – Harper Tories would go down, poll says
Angus-Reid is to be congratulated for polling Canadians on the Cullen Plan, rather than just focusing on the simplistic ‘merger’ issue. The latest Angus-Reid poll has this interesting snippet about the response to the Cullen Plan’s proposal that the NDP and LPC decide in individual ridings to select just one
Continue readingCuriosityCat: The New Era: The Cullen Plan is alive, and a coalition government probable
Nathan Cullen broke with other senior Dippers during the NDP leadership race to openly espouse the concept of electoral cooperation between the NDP, the LPC and the Greens. The aim would not be a merger of the three parties, but simply a working arrangement at the constituency level – driven
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Liberal blogger CalgaryGrit makes persuasive argument for Cullen as NDP leader
WesternGrit ranks the top NDP leadership candidates through the prism of what is best for the Liberal Party, and, while expressly not endorsing any candidate, outlines a very strong case for Nathan Cullen as the best NDP choice for Canada (my underlining): How would Cullen affect the LPC? Well, if
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Ten thousand Canadians on electoral cooperation
The online activist group Leadnow.ca surveyed its members and found this result: This could be the start of something big. Last Thursday, we sent a message to the whole Leadnow community. We asked if you would support political cooperation between the NDP, Liberals and Greens to defeat the current government
Continue readingCuriosityCat: Will Nathan Cullen have to thank these 2 if he becomes leader on Saturday?
We’ve heard little about the results of the push by these two significant groups, but perhaps by Sunday morning we will all be nodding our heads and saying: Of course! That’s what made it possible! Nathan Cullen – The Uniter Two online advocacy organizations are giving a potentially big boost
Continue readingCuriosityCat: The C-word: Refreshing honesty from NDP’s Nathan Cullen
Remember when Michael Ignatieff turned himself into a pretzel while trying to respond to the simple question whether he would or would not enter into a coalition with other parties if the Tories did not get a majority? It seemed that every day he had another answer, with the latest
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