Canada on the Brink of an election

[Pardalis]

as opposed to just 'Liberal' (same in both languages, I think.)

The stem of the maple leaf makes up for the accent, which I think is inventive.

 

[Jimbo07]

I'm not sure why you quoted my response to somebody else rather than my response to you.

Sorry, just a train of thought. There were points in there I wanted to address. I even conceded in my post that some of that wasn't directed at me. I just wanted to talk about those points.

Anyway, what makes you think it's a single issue?

You're about to go on and say as much!

Clearly you have opinions on the F-35 procurement, and the amount of money to be spent on it. Are you suggesting that none of this issue would impact your vote, either for or against?

That's almost exactly what I'm saying. Good or bad, Iggy tried to make the F-35s an issue, trying to recapture some magic from the 90s. It failed. Nobody cares.

Once the ink is dry on the F-35 procurement (and my reasons for supporting it are in earlier posts) then for all I care the next government can be an NDP majority and they can devote spending to orphans and single moms.

See? It seems to me like you don't care whether your government is rabid Fascist Conservatives, or frothing Communist NDPers, you're concerned about one particular model of one particular aspect of military procurement (which, you're right, I have my own opinions about anyway). I would even understand it if your issue had been "military procurement."

I just personally have trouble understanding "F-35s," in particular, as an issue. That's why I was curious. What is so compelling about an F-35 that someone would base their entire vote on it (or at least make it a leading issue)?

Oh well, to each his own...

 

[Comrade Raptor]

See? It seems to me like you don't care whether your government is rabid Fascist Conservatives, or frothing Communist NDPers, you're concerned about one particular model of one particular aspect of military procurement (which, you're right, I have my own opinions about anyway). I would even understand it if your issue had been "military procurement."

I just personally have trouble understanding "F-35s," in particular, as an issue. That's why I was curious. What is so compelling about an F-35 that someone would base their entire vote on it (or at least make it a leading issue)?

Oh well, to each his own...

Ok, I think I understand the confusion here so I'll try to clear it up.


I hold no pure party allegiance, so every election I make my choice based on what's going on at the time, what's being argued, what I want to see happen, and the state of the country. With a long string of minority government frequent elections, this usually defaulted to picking a local candidate. Call it election fatigue, maybe.

Now in my day-to-day politics, I tend to be left of center except in two areas: business and military. Business is the trickier one, so mostly I leave that to sort itself out so long as it's neither at the great expense of established social programs nor so heavily taxed that it's stifled.

But for defense, I'm always in support of a strong military and for giving them good fighting gear. Personally (though unrealistically, I think) I'd like to see Canada's forces equal to 10% of whatever the US has. This will never happen. Or I'd like to see a total re-organization (this is best detailed in its own post/thread, and I may do so at some future point).


Now, for defense we see that we've already taken care of the old Leopards by buying secondhand L2's. I'm fine with this, since they're parity with the M1 which itself doesn't yet have a replacement. So our armored forces are good for a while.

The navy is set for a supplementary vessel program in the near future, and so far this has not been up for strong political debate. So right now, that's not an issue on the table.

The issuew on the table, right now, is the fighter procurement. So at this moment, that's the issue that decided me.

It doesn't exist in a vacuum. You perceive it as a single issue, but that's wrong. It's just the TOP issue. It's my voting priority, and I think it's important enough to make all the other stuff I feel is important take a back seat.

Somebody else's top issue might have been more mundane. Health care, maybe. But I figure if health care survived the Liberal knife in the 90's, it's probably going to be ok. I don't see abortion or gay marriage being a big "make a decision" item at the moment. These maybe become threatened issues later, but right now I don't think they are.

Corporate tax relief, that was on the table now. I'm pretty neutral on it.

So the only things left for me were either pure politics (Conservatives bad! Raaa!), vote local (my original intention), or vote for something I think is important overall for Canada.

And that came down to fighters. Right now. For this election only.

So why is this so odd? I mean, from my perspective it seems perfectly logical given the above. It might not be everybody's pet political issue, but that doesn't mean it's not still important enough to vote about. Heck, from my perspective it's really the only issue this election was about. Even the 'contempt of parliament' motion had roots in the procurement issue.

So really, depending on how you choose to view it, rather than voting on a strange single issue I might have been one of the few to cast a vote on what the election was actually about: the budget, contempt of parliament, and the fighter procurement that's a big part of both.


Hopefully this has helped clear up the confusion.

 

[Comrade Raptor]

I'm going to add another post so hopefully I won't have to come back and make one later.


The fact that the fighters were my top priority created for you the assumption that it was a single issue. My own assumption is that casting it in this light implies an unsophisticated decision-making process. That, enchanted by the possibility of hi-tech fancy gear, I just went out and voted on that premise.

This could not be more wrong.

My decision cam admittedly quickly, but it didn't take that long to get to the bottom of it. It went like this.

Huh, another election. Damn, I'm sick of these.

Ok, so what have we got.

Do I like Harper? Hell no.

Who would I like to see in his place? NDP? Not really. Liberals? Iggy's not a better choice.

Likely election result? Probably another conservative minority.

Vote local? Sure. Jack Harris, NDP. Same as last time.


***FIGHTER ISSUE***

Whoa, ok. Game changer.

Do we need fighter replacements? Yes, desperately.

Is this the only alternative? No.

Best alternative? Yes. We'll be buying them in 10 years anyway, cheaper to get them now.

Who wants them? Ugh, Harper.

Who doesn't? Everybody else.

Is Health Care threatened under Harper? No, don't think so. Sacred Canadian Cow.

Social Programs? Not existing ones especially, but new ones will have to wait.

If health care or fighters was the choice, which would it be? Health Care.

What about corporate tax breaks? Good either way. Canada hasn't been suffering, it might be a boost. Could be good. Probably not especially awesome or especially bad in either case.

Will fighter procurement increase deficit and debt? Certainly.

Worth it? Prefer we didn't have to. Surplus was nice. But CF-188s need replacement, it'll only cost more to wait, potential benefit to Canadian Aerospace. So, yeah. Better to do it now with the type we'll likely buy eventually.

Will voting conservative even matter in your district? Not a bit. Jack Harris is a local powerhouse. Symbolic only, putting my vote where my mouth is.


End decision? Jerry Byrne, conservative.



And that's how I made up my mind. However strange choosing fighters might seem on the surface, that's probably more thought into my vote than most people bothered with.

 

[Segnosaur]

Re: The F35 fighter purchase...

My opinion is that there are larger issues...

I already pointed out that while there may be "large issues", defense is one of the core functions of the federal government.

...such as health care...

The Federal government had already substantially increased provincial transfers, so overall funding shouldn't be an issue. All 3 parties had plans to increase the number of doctors. I believe the NDP had plans to cut the cost of drugs, but frankly I can't see how they could have done it practically without negative repercussions.)

...the economy...

All parties had plans to deal with the economy. A reference I posted earlier did suggest there was evidence that corporate tax cuts can stimulate the economy, and the conservatives did have other spending proposals (e.g. extending the home retrofit program) to further stimulate the economy.

So, nothing in the conservative plans suggests they will ignore the economy (even if they handle the problems differently than the liberals/ndp).

...our security through diplomacy, etc.

Which of course is something that is always ongoing, and won't be impacted by any military purchases.

Our security is definitely an issue, but Canada can't ensure its security through force of arms. It's just too small.

Nobody said that we should be prepared to fight against all threats single handed, but I suspect most people would find it necessarily to at least have planes to run regular air patrols. (I wonder how many Canadians would feel if we had to call the Americans whenever a plane goes off course over our own territory.)

I'm just not entirely sure that overspending on F-35s is the way to go.

Not speaking for ComradeRaptor, but as I've said before, even if you think the F35 is too expensive/the wrong plane/etc, the fact is the CF18s need to be replaced. Their air frames are expected to last less than 10 years before serious problems occur. The liberals made it clear that they're putting "family before jets". This implies that they won't replace them before there are problems.

I'm not necessarily hung up on the F35. I would have been happy had the liberals or NDP said "we want to purchase plane X", or even if they said they'd immediately start another competition. But they didn't. And that shows that they are either lying, or that they are willing to put their political fortune over good management.

I can see this being a repeat of the EH101 fiasco... cancel a big military contract with much hoopla, but then turn around and buy the exact same helicopter years later for search and rescue (although with added costs, and with a military who's effectiveness is reduced because they can't get their planes from point A to point B with any reliability.)

The Navy should probably get new supply ships and maritime helicopters long before the Air Force gets new fighters, much less F-35s.

Ummm... the Navy has already started the process of getting new supply ships. (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2010/07/14/government-shipbuilding-strategy.html).

And we've also started getting new maritime helicopters... the cormorant for search and rescue (we already have these in operation), and the cyclone for surveillance. In fact, we would have had them already, if the chretien government hadn't cancelled the original EH101 contract.

And by the way, when you're dealing with issues of national defense, you shouldn't look at it as "A or B"... if you have the need for particular equipment, you get it.

 

[ZouPrime]

The F-35 whining is purely a knee-jerk reaction against all things military - come on, that was so obvious from the very beginning.

Funny things, the Libs are probably pretty happy that the issue is going to be dealt by the conservatives - since dealing themselves with it would be frown by a portion of their base. The Conservative have been upgrading military hardware left and right mostly because 12 years of Liberal majority has left our troops in a pretty sad state, and something has to be done at one point.

Note that I didn't vote for Harper, but I've always found the whole F-35 affair a bit lame.

And don't talk to me about the procurement process... people think fighter planes can be bought the same way one buy a new car, you call the dealership and one week after you get it.

 

[Blue Mountain]

And don't talk to me about the procurement process... people think fighter planes can be bought the same way one buy a new car, you call the dealership and one week after you get it.

Meh. I got my last jet fighter on eBay.

Despite my post on the previous page warning of the dire consequences of a Harper win, I can see the following good things happening:

• Better funding for the military. They don't just fight wars; very often they're among the first responders to national and international emergencies. Although for Toronto's sake they should also invest in some snowplows.
• An opening up of the cellular telephone market and perhaps even the high-speed cable market. A downside may be a loss of net neutrality, leaving ISPs free to do deep packet inspection on your traffic. That would let them do nasty things like redirecting search engine queries and 404 error pages. It's bad enough their nameservers don't return proper NX responses when you enter an invalid URL.
• Lower federal taxes. That may be offset by higher provincial taxes if the government cuts back on transfer payments.
• A re-invigorated and re-organized Left in Canada. Remember, the (Progressive) Conservatives were down to two seats in Parliamet at one time.

 

[Madalch]

Remember, the (Progressive) Conservatives were down to two seats in Parliament at one time.

...and then they got taken over by the Reform Party.

 

[Delvo]

It seems to me like you don't care whether your government is rabid Fascist Conservatives, or frothing Communist NDPers, you're concerned about one particular model of one particular aspect of military procurement (which, you're right, I have my own opinions about anyway). I would even understand it if your issue had been "military procurement."

I just personally have trouble understanding "F-35s," in particular, as an issue. That's why I was curious. What is so compelling about an F-35 that someone would base their entire vote on it (or at least make it a leading issue)?

It isn't like just any other example of military procurement. With most classes of military equipment, if you don't get some particular model of something, there are still other things you could use instead. Not getting Lightnings would have a much larger effect on the armed forces than not getting almost any other kind of equipment, because of the lack of other fighters, attack aircraft, or bombers. It would mean having no firepower from the air at all, which isn't far off from giving up on having a military service at all. Maybe some would say you should indeed not bother with air power or military power in general, but it's at least a decision that should be made deliberately, acknowledging that that's what's being chosen, not just blindly stumbled into by neglect.

 

[Segnosaur]

And don't talk to me about the procurement process... people think fighter planes can be bought the same way one buy a new car, you call the dealership and one week after you get it.

Meh. I got my last jet fighter on eBay.

I won mine in a Pepsi contest...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico,_Inc.

 

[Captain.Sassy]

BLAST FROM THE PAST:

If our goal is the wellbeing of people in far off countries we can achieve this goal far more effectively through development projects in sub-Saharan Africa. Morally, I see no difference between letting someone die because Khaddaffi shot them and letting someone die because their water was swarming with disease.

Bombing bad governments is a hugely cost-ineffective way of saving lives.

BLAST FROM THE NOW:
What about the Against Malaria Foundation? What they do is provide long-lasting insecticide treated bed nets in order to protect defenseless civilians from a form of biological warfare known as the Plasmodium parasite which spreads via bites from insects of the Anopheles genus. According to The Life You Can Save, handing out these bed nets saves about one life for every $1,865 spent. That's to say that if the United States was able to spend the $1.1 billion we spent on the Libya operation on long-lasting insecticide treated bed nets we could have saved almost 590,000 lives from almost certain destruction. America's other allies in Libya spent about $3 billion in total together. That's something to think about.


Yglesias knows what's up. From a cold, calculating, ruthless perspective: if you want to save people's lives, invest in 'not disease'.






it's like realism with a human face or summin.

 

[Joey McGee]

I think this is ********.

I do think it's worth interrogating the larger political and ideological construct that says that spending a few billions dollars to help foreigners is a thinkable undertaking if and only if the means of providing assistance is to kill some people and blow some stuff up.

What planet is this guy living on? Maybe he could have included the amount of aid that the US has given for those initiatives worldwide over the last several decades? Anyone with a cursory knowledge of what the US and the international community spends on aid should bristle at the arguments of this hack. Is this an either or situation? No...

 

[Captain.Sassy]

I think this is ********.What planet is this guy living on? Maybe he could have included the amount of aid that the US has given for those initiatives worldwide over the last several decades? Anyone with a cursory knowledge of what the US and the international community spends on aid should bristle at the arguments of this hack. Is this an either or situation? No...

That's a good point. You should bring some numbers into it. Let's take the end of the cold war (when the US basically got free reign to bomb the world safe) and look at the cost of US humanitarian interventions vs. the total amount of US foreign aid.

And I'm not being sarcastic- I honestly think your raise an interesting point here but I'd like to see the numbers.

It would be even more convincing if you could bring in some kind of 'marginal returns' analysis... i.e. 'yes, we spend X on bombs and Y on vaccines, and yes, vaccines save many more lives per dollar... BUT... if we spent less on bombs, the lives saved per bomb would go up... and if we spent more on vaccines, the lives saved on vaccines would go down'.

Anyways my cat is chasing a moth. I'm gonna go check out the action.

 

[Joey McGee]

Oh sure, I'll get my think tank right on those numbers buddy.

The logic is wrong, this has not been addressed. You can't choose between vaccines and bombs. How naive? honestly...

 

[Segnosaur]

BLAST FROM THE PAST:


BLAST FROM THE NOW:
That's to say that if the United States was able to spend the $1.1 billion we spent on the Libya operation on long-lasting insecticide treated bed nets we could have saved almost 590,000 lives from almost certain destruction. America's other allies in Libya spent about $3 billion in total together. That's something to think about.

Yglesias knows what's up. From a cold, calculating, ruthless perspective: if you want to save people's lives, invest in 'not disease'.

The problem with that argument is that it assumes that each and every dollar spent on things like mosquito netting would actually be used properly for its intended purpose. However, as we've seen with things like famines, complaints over GMOs, etc. that sometimes politics and outright stupidity can get in the way of providing foreign aid.

But lets say we knew such aid would be effective. Here's an even better question...

Why are you suggesting that the choice has to be between saving lives (inefficiently) through military action or saving lives (more efficiently) through disease prevention?

Heck, look at Canada. We spend roughly $1 billion a year on the CBC, yet you'd be hard pressed to find one life that's been saved through that spending. Wouldn't the world be better off if we eliminated government funding of the CBC and had that money spent on mosquito netting, etc., as well as funding military actions to prevent genocide?

 

[Morrigan]

What the hell does this two years later bump have to do with Canadian elections and politics?

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

What the hell does this two years later bump have to do with Canadian elections and politics?

Eh? What indeed.