Canada needs a new political party... What is its platform?
I think a majority of Canadians are kind, hardworking, and want what's best for their families, friends, neighbours, and the country.
What does a brand new political party platform look like to appeal to an overwhelming majority of Canadians?
The NDP already represent a lot of what the majority of Canadians want, but fearmongering about sOciALiSm, and the party having to move more towards the center to try and meet the Liberals halfway has diluted their brand.
The people who would never vote for them anyways think that they're too far left, and the people who used to support them see them as too-eager-to-please to the current Liberal government.
If you could magically snap away people's preconcieved notions and team mentality towards politics, and had them read party policies carte blanche, I think a large portion of Canadians would go NDP, especially if they went back to their traditional policies and mindset.
If you could magically snap away people's preconcieved notions and team mentality towards politics, and had them read party policies carte blanche, I think a large portion of Canadians would go NDP, especially if they went back to their traditional policies and mindset.
You could say the same about any of the parties. Their platforms all sound great, it's the implementation and actual outcomes that differ.
The People's Party (I know, kinda cheating) Platform is pretty easy to tell which party it is. It's pro conversion therapy(shock treatments, "pray the gay away" camps/prisons), including on children, and anti-trans. It even name-drops Jordan Peterson.
That's pretty easy to spot and avoid.
The cons say that they don't believe that Canada should have a carbon tax, or a carbon cap as a national policy as #31 of their Policy Declaration.
That's also pretty easy to avoid.
I could see someone looking the NDP and LIb platforms and not being able to tell which is which, though they could pretty easily figure out that they are not right-wing.
What does a brand new political party platform look like to appeal to an overwhelming majority of Canadians?
Empty set. The overwhelming majority of Canadians (and voters in general around the world) don't follow policy that closely, which is why spin, kissing babies and brand loyalty is such a huge part of politics.
Then what's the spin you want to hear from a politician that would make you vote for them? (That is, spin that isn't full of racism and rhetoric about the other side.)
So, spin is rephrasing something so it seems more palatable when you don't have the full context, but if you're asking for my personal policy wishlist I can certainly give you that!
Basic income would be great, and should probably be about where minimum wage is now. At the other end, a hard wealth cap at 10 million or something is overdue. If you're a skilled professional and you save heavily you can absolutely save up a few million before you retire, but nobody makes it to 8 digits without being some sort of bigshot, and at that point it becomes self-perpetuating. Not making it gradual should prevent most flight of capital.
I recently learned Norway has a party list electoral system like several other countries, but uniquely doesn't allow snap elections. If the government loses confidence, they just form a new coalition from the existing parliament. That sounds like it would avoid a lot of the problems we have in both FPTP and proportional systems.
Those are the big two, but there's other less fundamental issues I have opinions about. We should keep legalising drugs, because they were largely banned for stupid reasons in the first place. Most forms of zoning should probably be thrown out too, because if anything the cities they've produced are even more soulless, now with a side of being impractical. I'm glad we have a carbon tax, and I think we should keep raising it.
Edit: Publicly funded elections are up there, too. We don't have a terrible situation right now in Canada, what with strong donation limits, but it just makes sense to go all the way and leave no ambiguity that could cause problems down the line.
Allow scary looking guns but require the gun and anything that goes onto or into it, anything that it attaches to and anything that attaches to it to be hot pink. Possession of anything that should be hot pink but isn't automatically loose the privilege of owning guns for life. Allow a gun or anything that should be hot pink but isn't into your range lose your licence forever. Sell a gun or anything else that should be hot pink loose your license forever.
Being hot pink does not in any way diminish the function of the gun. I'm perfectly happy to shoot with a hot pink gun. If you object then the only reason you want the gun is for how it looks and how it makes you feel. Those are bad reasons to own a gun in Canada.
A labor or workers' party that unifies anyone who works for a living, whether as an employee or a small business owner. The platform should focus on shifting the balance of power from capital to labor via clearly social democratic policies with strong emphasis on workers rights and reunionization. This party should go out of its way to advertise and educate the public on why and how these policies benefit the majority. Lon-term future policies might revolve around reforming corporate ownership structures or promoting alternative worker ownership structures, among other things.
Seconding a labour party. Focus on affordability for the common person. Make the process to set up employee owned businesses easy, cater to business of all sizes regardless of how much lobbying/influence money provided. Give unions better negotiating tools. Promote democratic reform so individuals can feel more active in giving input to civic reforms (when was our last referendum?), and not just for the well-connected and wealthy. This is different than a policy by Twitter-poll (what populists like Premier Doug Ford tend to do) but a visionary party to reinforce the notion that the government is us. Not a team sport to be played.
I'd love to see an Electoral Reform Party.
They have only two pillars once elected:
Then, more generally, they campaign about how broken FPTP is and how completely compatible STV is to Canadian politics:
I could go on. Like that it's been a successful system in Ireland for over a century.
I love this, but shouldn't they vote as a block, but proportionally for the parties who sponsor the bill? :p
I'd change a couple things though:
Re: 1, that would destroy their only leverage. The only way the party works is if they get enough seats that they're needed to form a coalition government. Otherwise, their votes are irrelevant: it's either a majority government or a coalition government that excludes them.
2, can they call themselves that? The Reform Party presumably still owns that name, I would have thought? Still, good idea. "Reform Canada Party" maybe would work?
Re: 3, the problem is that it will take time to get Elections Canada ready for an election with an entirely different voting system. They'll need to procure voting machines, create policies and training manuals for everything (including how to manually recount physical votes), define the ridings, design the new ballots, etc. They'll need a full election cycle to prepare for it.
Whatever system it is ... it has to be more socially minded to helping individual common people across the country of all backgrounds, races, cultures and genders
You also have to figure out how to disconnect it from wealth and corporate influence. Once its allowed to have too much money affecting it ... whatever changes you want will just devolve down to what we already have. Money corrupts and money will corrupt every system no matter how socially or equitably minded we want it to be.
I would create the evidence party.
It has the stated objective of maximizing quality of life for all Canadians.
It doesn’t care what people think is the best way to do that, it looks at research to determine what is the actual best way to do that and commission’s research to determine the most effective policies when existing evidence doesn’t exist.
It flip-flops on any issue when new research supports a different policy.
You'd absolutely just have the problem of turfed research and sponsored studies. Science itself is overly politicized these days.
Culpability party. The whole point is to enact laws that make people culpable for the things they say. If a member of parliament accuse something, and it's found not to be true, they get some sort of penalty. If they promise something during elections and it doesn't happen after they get elected, they and their party gets a punishment.
And not just some sort of slap on the wrist, but something substantial enough that repeat offences can be career ending within the field of politics. Politicians need to be responsible for what they say, as words are their weapons of choice, and with the level of power they have, they should also carry that level of responsibility.
While there is something to be said about saying something wrong due to ignorance, it's another matter to say something with authority on a subject one is ignorant about. You can't just say something like abortions should be outlawed because women can just turn off their fertility (yes, a politician actually said that).
This was the purpose of the Australian Democrats party before they died out.
At a Melbourne media conference on 19 September 1980, in the midst of the 1980 election campaign, Chipp described his party's aim as to "keep the bastards honest"—the "bastards" being the major parties and/or politicians in general. This became a long-lived slogan for the Democrats.
I like the idea that politicians are held to a higher standard, but I can't imagine it would be easy to enforce. If it was a financial penalty, it would encourage corruption. If the penalty was an exclusion from running in the next election, the group that makes that determination could be weaponized. It would be difficult to structure.
I know. It's just idealism at its finest. Just like how proportional representation won't ever be implement because it won't ever benifit the one who has the power to put it into practice, such a policy could never actually be enacted.
But I like to dream, even if I know it'll never happen.
Centre Ice Canadians are building the "Our Canadian Future Party" (real name TBD pending elections Canada approval) -- target audience is centrist, with largely reasonable statements so far. In particular, they're heavily pro nuclear, which is a huge selling point for me...
But it's a group of old Conservatives, how can it be centrist?
https://www.ourcanadianfuture.ca/general-1
Seems fairly centrist.
Heh... I like the idea of a 'blue line' 'centre ice' party... Every Canuck should know what it means, and it's a nod to our Hockey heritage, but I can totally see it getting mixed up with the nazi police 'thin blue line' bullshit.
“Icing” has two very different meanings there.
But I’d definitely support a political penalty box.
It's hard to say what an "overwhelming majority" platform would look like. With the recent elections it was minority government. You have to cherry pick the most popular policies from each party and hope they don't overlap with the least popular from the same. For one person great social programs are a priority and then another a strong private sector.
Super interested to see what more politically inclined folks have to say!
I've always been for creating a series of hills across Canada so we can take our bikes and coast from coast to coast...
But, as someone who lives abroad I would love to be able to vote again. Has that rule changed?
Maybe election reform someday would be appealing to a majority of Canadians, and also teaching about elections in school a little more.
My mother is getting old and she feels like old people have a shit deal, so we need to do something about that. Student loan debt needs to be sorted out.
I want more emphasis on the environment. When I move back to Canada, I would pay carbon taxes if there were also carbon freebates (or whatever they want to call them). I would be all for 4-day workweeks or even universal income. Yes, I am a dirty socialist eco-friendly freak. Leave the trees alone, stop maplewashing everything, we have the space to rewild areas, invest in trains and stop charging so much for them (don't know how that would work), and make sure people can have a retirement to look forward to. Minimum wage should be higher, teachers should earn more, new parents should have MONTHS of paid parental leave, childcare needs to be covered...
Healthcare needs an overhaul: why was my mother on a 9-month waitlist to confirm she had lymphoma? Why is my 72-year-old father still working 16-hour days even though he is sick? Why can't either of them see their GP?
No house parties! Once the election is over, people are seated randomly and every vote is a free vote.That way there is an organizational structure for the creation of platforms, but proposed legislation has to legitimately convince a majority of sitting members.
None of the above! This becomes a formal option on the ballot. If NOTB wins a constituency, there is an automatic by-election and none of the people on that ballot can run again. If NOTB is elected to the ruling party, well, that's a pretty big do over that comes with a pretty strong signal that every party and every candidate is out of touch with reality.
Abolish FPTP! There are some legitimate arguments over the pros and cons of various electoral systems, but every honest person knows that FPTP is fatally flawed.
Citizens' committees! I fail to see how a large enough collection of randomly selected people could possibly do worse than our current crop. We might never have true sortition and maybe true sortition is a bad idea, but a randomly selected citizens' committee would let us test the waters and experiment with different amounts of "power to the people". At the very least, a parallel structure with no party alignments might come up with different ideas than we have now.
I'm with you on most points but first and foremost abolition of party system has got to happen. Our politics just turned into tribalism, "us vs them" game that is being played at our expense. It's got to stop. I don't see any more of "lets compromise and work together" and constant "we'll tear down what other party was building... because it has THEIR name attached".
FPTP contributes greatly to the lack of political discourse and constant bickering with powergrab moves. It eliminates variaty forcing landscape to oscilate down to 2 options which over time become virtually identical and differ in optics only.
Instead of NOTA party, a quorum requirement. If not enough people vote to meet a quorum for a riding, the results are invalid and the election is redone. Further, due to the low engagement, all candidates who previously ran for said riding are barred from running again. Same idea as "None of the Above" party being formalized, but also increases engagement; sitting out means, literally, "meh, they all suck."
I mean, FFS, my condominium needs a quorum to do something obvious like getting our AC chiller upgraded; and yet, only 18% of eligible voters can give someone like Doug Ford a fucking majority?!
Thanks! I don't know why I didn't think of quorum instead of NOTA. I've sat on many boards, so I'm familiar with the concept.
It's not compatible with the mandatory voting found elsewhere, but that's not an issue for Canada.
Canadians are more divided than ever, I don't think you'll be able to find a platform that appeals to the overwhelming majority
I think it's a false division, which is stoked by far-right leaning politicians. I'd like to believe that even people who lean right politically are still for functioning public education and health care. The issue is that people aren't doing as well as they remember doing 20 years ago for a variety of very solvable issues.
The old Conservative Party, the current one is just the reform party
want what's best for their families, friends, neighbours, and the country.
Okay, so caring for one another is in and the blue party is out.
Saving money through consolidation and single-payer services? Again, blue's out. Orange has it here but can't get into power without vote reform and the courage it gives us to vote our hearts.
One's obligation to friends, family, and the country, directly proportional to one's income, so our most at-risk can focus on improvement? Blues still out. This seems to be a red thing.
I don't know whether there's enough there to get a new party. Who's convinced you that one of the existing ones are no good; and tell us which blue it was too.
That's just off the top of my head...
So, the Liberals if they were less corrupted by business.