Neue, liberale Regierung in Canada – Harper abgewählt!

Wieder nur einen Sitz für die Green Party of Canada – mit Proportionaler Representation wie in Deutschland hätten sie 10 erreicht:

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Posted by Facebook on Friday, December 5, 2014

Hier ist der neue Premierminister Justin Trudeau, Sohn des früheren PM’s Pierre Elliot Trudeau, mit seiner Siegesrede in der Nacht nach der Wahl:

Canada Day prescription by Elizabeth May

first published on Thursday, July 18th, 2013 in Island Tides
On my Canada Day travels, I was asked what I would change about democracy in Canada. There is so much wrong in the current state of politics that people might think there is no available remedy. The good news is that relatively few steps, none requiring major effort, but all requiring an engaged citizenry, can restore the body politic to health.

Here is my prescription for what ails Canada’s democracy. Let me know what you think!

First, get rid of ‘first-past-the-post’ and elect MPs, as is done in most modern democracies, by some form of proportional representation. Make sure every vote counts so voters feel the impact of their vote. Thanks to first-past-the-post, in 2011, a minority of voters elected a majority government. Such ‘false majorities,’ as University of Toronto Professor Emeritus Peter Russell has dubbed them, … Continue reading

Gas prices will go up with new Keystone Pipeline

Update 12 JAN: Hervorragende Richtigstellung in “The Ottawa Citizen“, numbers and all:

“If there were a global competition for the most brazen and preposterously transparent attempt by a ruling political party to change a necessary subject of national debate with alarmist distractions and hubbub, the Conservative escapade engineered in Ottawa these past few days really deserves some kind of grand prize.”

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/business/real+foreign+interests+oilsands/5981230/story.html#ixzz1jJFgpKPa

Update 11 JAN: The Toronto Star calls a Cabinet Minister using that rhetoric “nuts”. This passage contains a more realistic assessment: “The parody lies with the fact that Canada’s oil industry is dominated by multinationals. That means there will indeed be a lot of big-money foreign interests pushing the three-person federal review panel to okay a pipeline from Alberta’s oilsands to a tanker port at Kitimat on the British Columbia coast.

America’s Exxon Mobil, Britain’s BP, France’s Total E&P, China’s SinoCanada Petroleum … Continue reading

Kanada wählt jung!

Oh Kanada, ich kenne Dich nicht wieder! Immer wenn man es am wenigsten erwartet, hat dieser verspannte Ort eine unerwartete Wendung auf Lager…

Erst ging es in diese Kampagne so gelangweilt und vorhersehbar wie eh und je (is’ ja nur die vierte in sieben Jahren), scheinen jedenfalls die hier ansässigen JournalistInnen sich alle einig zu sein, obwohl Premierminister Stephen Harper das Ende seiner zweiten MInderheitsregierung vermutlich selbst getimt hat – dass er mit seiner neuesten Heimlichtuerei über die im Haushalt nicht verbuchten Kosten der neu zu kaufenden Kampfjets diesmal nicht am Parlament vorbeikommen konnte, scheint auch Stephen Harper selbst klar gewesen zu sein – was im Zusammenhang mit der Tatsache, dass die konservative Partei Kanada’s über ein halbes Jahr negativ und personenbezogen auf der liberalen Opposition rumhackte in bezahlten Fernseh-Spots, aus den allgemeinen Töpfen der konservativen Partei finanziert, in eine gewisse Perspektive rückt – beides ist zu Wahlzeiten illegal, … Continue reading

Excluded again – really?

The Green Party won over almost 11 % of the voting German population resulting in 68 seats in the Bundestag in 2009 – they have been in parliament since 1983 where – curiously, not only the liberal party of Germany, FDP, supported a non-confidence-vote that toppled their own coalition with the Social-Democrats SPD and made Helmut Kohl, CEO of the conservative party CDU, chancellor, but also saw the first Green Party members occupy seats in the German equivalent to the federal parliament.

How many of those seats, till 2day, a party gets, follows a system recommended by experts @ fairvote.ca in order 2 increase democracy in the great North – in good old this very similar electoral system sets the threshold 2 get for the proportional part (where the party average across the country is counted) at 5 percent, Austria thinks 4 is better, and the Knesset, the parliament … Continue reading