Comments on: A bit of news from Canada…

by: Tim West

Wed, 11 Jan 2006 02:08:22 +0000

I’d still take their system over ours. They have problems as well, witness the Liberal scandal, but we have a entire system of corruption and de facto quid pro quo that Canada could never hope to match.

by: rj

Wed, 11 Jan 2006 01:22:38 +0000

I flipped by the debate last night on C-span. It had a lot of interplay between the candidates. Not as structured as the presidential debates here, but a person’s position was challenged more. The Conservative and Liberal candidates didn’t pay the Quebec or NDP candidate much mind as they did each other.

by: Otto Kerner

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 09:33:16 +0000

Stuart Richards is right. People often accuse multiparty systems of privileging small extremist parties. In fact, this is a distortion introduced by party discipline: the two big parties often agree more with each other than with any of the smaller factions, but they cannot work together on an issue-by-issue basis because their members are not free to cross the aisle without people thinking they have betrayed their own party. This leaves no option but for the big parties to make alliances with smaller, more radical parties with whom they have fewer points of agreement.

by: Stuart Richards

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 06:00:19 +0000

Canada’s system of electing people is better than ours is insofar as the number of parties. As far as party discipline and checks and balances, though, we’re far better.

by: Otto Kerner

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 05:01:45 +0000

I agree that it would be much more interesting. However, maybe U.S. political culture is a good thing for practical reasons. Look at the viewpoints they have up there: leftish, left, and very left (remember that Bloc Quebecois is ostensibly a socialist party itself). On top of that, most of their Conservatives would probably be DLC Democrats if they were in the U.S.

by: Tim West

Tue, 10 Jan 2006 01:54:23 +0000

I frankly wish that as well. Our system sucks, and I personally would change it over to the Canadian Parlamentary system in a heartbeat. You can say what you like, but I know from personal experience ( my ex-wife was Canadian ) that Canadian civic political life is in better shape than ours is.