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Why the Liberals lost and where should they go from here.

Urban Shocker said:
The Conservatives have done nothing specifically for Toronto either, and they've just had a breakthrough in support here as a result. Knowing that we'll vote for them under those demeaning circumstances, why would they not take us for granted and do nothing for us in the future?
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Demeaning? Not sure I get that. Are we now channeling the humiliation the quebecois never tire of dredging up? Are we going to see "je me souviens" bumper stickers on Volvos in the Annex?

Anyway, my point was that 416 elected mostly Liberal MP's for decades and none of them ever delivered for Toronto, whether in government or in opposition. So we can choose to continue to elect the same motley crew that have demonstrated complete indifference to our interests, or we can try something new. I agree the Harper Conservatives did nothing for Toronto when we hadn't elected any MP's from their party. I don't think it follows they'll do nothing for us now. If the Conservatives we have elected do prove as useless as the Liberals for Toronto - which would take some doing - then by all means we should vote against them in the next election. What we shouldn't do is vote Liberal ever again. We've tried that for over 30 years and suffered from a complete lack of representation.
 
afransen said:
I don't think the NDP could win a majority. They'd have to move quite a bit further right. The Conservatives can't be the government forever, so someway, somehow the Liberal party is likely to play that role.
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I don't .... if they keep there quebec seats... and get the majority of seats in Ontario then viola a majority. And the NDP already has all the northern ontario seats too.... if NDP doesnt blow a tire as official opposition they could be the next party in Government, especially if Rae is the next Lib leader. Look for them to field a ton of star candidates next time around...
 
If the NDP doesn't blow a tire as official opposition, but the Conservatives don't either, then my prediction is that the next gov't will be Conservative.

However, the NDP have already made a few big gaffes, just in the first week. The Vegas MP has dominated NDP news, and the statement that there are no Bin Laden photos hasn't helped much either.
 
pman said:
Anyway, my point was that 416 elected mostly Liberal MP's for decades and none of them ever delivered for Toronto, whether in government or in opposition. So we can choose to continue to elect the same motley crew that have demonstrated complete indifference to our interests, or we can try something new. I agree the Harper Conservatives did nothing for Toronto when we hadn't elected any MP's from their party. I don't think it follows they'll do nothing for us now. If the Conservatives we have elected do prove as useless as the Liberals for Toronto - which would take some doing - then by all means we should vote against them in the next election.
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Though, if we're true to form, we'll keep voting for them for another decade or so, surely? They must know that.
 
Eug said:
If the NDP doesn't blow a tire as official opposition, but the Conservatives don't either, then my prediction is that the next gov't will be Conservative.

However, the NDP have already made a few big gaffes, just in the first week. The Vegas MP has dominated NDP news, and the statement that there are no Bin Laden photos hasn't helped much either.
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First the Progressive Conservatives bite it and now the Liberals have tanked, leaving the Conservatives as the "natural" ruling party; NDP's as official opposition for some time to come would also seem in order. Things should be interesting in the next 20 years, especially if true election reform takes place.

Maybe we should just adopt a parliamentary system similar to India.
 
Urban Shocker said:
The Conservatives have done nothing specifically for Toronto either, and they've just had a breakthrough in support here as a result. Knowing that we'll vote for them under those demeaning circumstances, why would they not take us for granted and do nothing for us in the future?
Click to expand...

We gave the Liberals a fifth of their caucus and what did that yield for us?

To be fair to the Conservatives, the closest they got to TO until now was electing Flaherty in Oshawa. Yet, I wouldn't say they did nothing for us. They contributed to the Sheppard line and the Union station revitalization. These may seem small to you, but compared to what the Liberals delivered in a whole decade prior, this seems to be par for the course, from my perspective.

The interesting thing here is not that the 416 elected a Conservative or two. It's that we elected a whole handful of them and the wider GTA even more. A good 10% of the Conservative caucus now comes from the GTA. And it's exactly this portion that gave them their majority and is most tenuous. Forget plowing money into Quebec. That province has now become the electoral wasteland for the Tories that the 416 once was. I'll be utterly astonished if they prove as dismissive of Toronto and the GTA, as they have in the past. These newly elected Conservative MPs will need ribbon cuttings to get re-elected. More specifically, they'll need ribbon cuttings that occur in 2015 that the Prime Minister can also attend. A new bus garage won't cut it this time.

And that's not counting the need to bolster Ford, who put his mayoral nuts on the line by openly endorsing the Conservatives. And the need to bolster Hudak in the upcoming election. I'll suggest that this could be a new spring for Toronto.
 
kEiThZ said:
The interesting thing here is not that the 416 elected a Conservative or two. It's that we elected a whole handful of them and the wider GTA even more. A good 10% of the Conservative caucus now comes from the GTA. And it's exactly this portion that gave them their majority and is most tenuous. Forget plowing money into Quebec. That province has now become the electoral wasteland for the Tories that the 416 once was. I'll be utterly astonished if they prove as dismissive of Toronto and the GTA, as they have in the past. These newly elected Conservative MPs will need ribbon cuttings to get re-elected. More specifically, they'll need ribbon cuttings that occur in 2015 that the Prime Minister can also attend. A new bus garage won't cut it this time.
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It's interesting that under Mulroney the federal Progressive Conservatives focused on winning seats in Quebec and the West, to the detriment of Ontario's interests. Actually the west didn't make out so well either. Take the CF18 maintenance contract as an example. The Conservatives under Harper won with support from Southern Ontario and the West, but not Quebec. It's a different equation and if Harper is smart - ya think? - he'll recognize that Alberta and Ontario have more or less the same interests - i.e. reducing the discrepancy between the taxes we pay to Ottawa and the dollars we get back. There used to be a time when Toronto could afford to build subways without asking Ottawa for money, and the reason we could do that is that we weren't a federal tax farm in those days. It would be nice to return to a state of the world where the cost of the government in Ottawa is so small, that we can afford to fund our own infrastructure without making a federal case out of it.
 
pman said:
There used to be a time when Toronto could afford to build subways without asking Ottawa for money, and the reason we could do that is that we weren't a federal tax farm in those days.
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I know it's meant to be hyperbole but that's just silly. First of all, federal taxation in Ontario has no relationship to the provincial and municipal tax base that traditionally funded public transit infrastructure. Secondly, Ontario has always been a net payer into Confederation since we've always been one of the wealthier provinces. Unless you're opposed to progressive taxation, there's nothing wrong with that. We "can't afford" subways any more because a) we choose not to, and b) their cost in Toronto has increased at a rate that far outpaces inflation.
 
Needless to say I am very disappointed in these election results - i cant watch TV news anymore, or CBC Power in Politics - its bad for my health.
Liberals lost due to uncharismatic leader
NDP soared to new heights because of charismatic leader
Harper won by communicating fear of unknown and threat of tax hikes
Canadians are sheep
 
Arob said:
Needless to say I am very disappointed in these election results - i cant watch TV news anymore, or CBC Power in Politics - its bad for my health.
Liberals lost due to uncharismatic leader
NDP soared to new heights because of charismatic leader
Harper won by communicating fear of unknown and threat of tax hikes
Canadians are sheep
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What a simplistic point of view.....
 
unimaginative2 said:
I know it's meant to be hyperbole but that's just silly. First of all, federal taxation in Ontario has no relationship to the provincial and municipal tax base that traditionally funded public transit infrastructure. Secondly, Ontario has always been a net payer into Confederation since we've always been one of the wealthier provinces. Unless you're opposed to progressive taxation, there's nothing wrong with that. We "can't afford" subways any more because a) we choose not to, and b) their cost in Toronto has increased at a rate that far outpaces inflation.
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Yet, pman is not wrong. The federal government today is a tax sucking behemoth (relatively speaking). Opening up tax room, would allow the provinces and municipalities to get additional revenue to tackle their infrastructure problems.

This requires courage on the part of provincial politicians. For example, McGuinty could have easily absorbed the extra 2% of the GST cut by raising the PST simultaneously every time it was cut, just like the Nova Scotia government did. This would have easily given Ontario, an extra $2 billion/year in revenue today.
 
unimaginative2 said:
I know it's meant to be hyperbole but that's just silly. First of all, federal taxation in Ontario has no relationship to the provincial and municipal tax base that traditionally funded public transit infrastructure. Secondly, Ontario has always been a net payer into Confederation since we've always been one of the wealthier provinces. Unless you're opposed to progressive taxation, there's nothing wrong with that. We "can't afford" subways any more because a) we choose not to, and b) their cost in Toronto has increased at a rate that far outpaces inflation.
Click to expand...

I didn't mean it as hyperbole, for the following reasons:

1. There's one taxpayer. If we pay more to the government in Ottawa, we can't afford to pay for transit infrastructure unless we raise taxes to the point where we damage our economy.

2. Federal transfers to provinces vary wildly on a per-capita basis and have a frozen-in-time structure that doesn't reflect current economic reality. PEI gets over half its provincial budget from Ottawa. Ontario gets a lot less. Maybe it's no coincidence that the number of voters per federal MP in PEI is about a quarter of the Ontario average.

3. We are no longer a wealthier province. We have higher unemployment than the national average and our provincial debt level is gruesome.

4. Ontario was a much smaller net payer (as a share of GDP) into Confederation in the 50's and 60's when we built the backbone of our subway system. At the time, we also had protected markets so there was at least some rational argument for redistributing income from Ontario to the welfare provinces. We now have free trade. We also have witnessed a massive expansion of the federal government's share of GDP relative to the 1950's, paid for by you and me and mostly spent elsewhere.

There are two solutions for Toronto's infrastructure problems. Either we get a fairer share of federal spending, or we reduce the federal take from our region.
 
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