Lorne Gunter has published a column that should serve as an important reference and wake-up call for all voters in the future. Here’s an especially brilliant portion:
One NDP supporter in Ms. Brosseau’s new riding asked the other day whether he and his fellow voters where victims of some sort of scam. No, sir, not victims — participants.
Who votes for someone who was never seen in the riding during the election, someone who doesn’t live anywhere near the riding, doesn’t articulate any policies and doesn’t even speak French all that well, but who is seeking to represent a constituency in which over 90% of the residents list their at-home language as French?
I must admit to being guilty of this ignorance myself. Sometimes I know quite a bit about my local candidate, other times I know nothing. I suspect that I’m not alone.
Update: Listen to Vegas Brosseau being interviewed! (h/t James) If you don’t speak French, give it a minute or so and the interview will switch to English.
You’re not alone Robert. Around here, candidates get a blurb in the local paper and that’s all I know about them. A blurb which their office provides to the paper, just to add to the absurdity.
That’s why I go for a wee visit to the CPC candidate. Go down to the riding office, say hi, make sure the guy/gal isn’t a zombie.
I guess nations really do get the governments they deserve. If you vote in someone who’s out of touch, you’ve got nothing to complain about later when they don’t seem to represent your interests.
A guy I know who’s been active in federal politics since the 1960’s once told me that it used to be said that Canadians were not uniform when it comes to electing MPs. In some areas – such as the Maritimes, Quebec, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba – people tend to vote for parties. For these people, it’s like cheering for a hockey team. You root for the team over years (even generations) without thought to the people on the ballot.
Whereas the other areas are more likely to follow individual candidates. If a popular candidate switches parties, the people have a greater likelihood of following the candidate. As a result, the decision to run a “star candidate” in a particular riding often depends on the “culture” of the riding.
Just my two cents.
She may be more useful to the right if she’s simply asked opinions on the topics of the day, and has those reported (fairly?) in the media.
Give her a microphone I say… let her roll … She’ll have to be wound up tight to surpass some of Hedy’s gems.
Despite the pretense that we vote for the candidate because of course we are all ever so conscientious, the fact is we vote for the PARTY. We don’t really much care who is representing the Party as for the most part the overwhelming majority of voters will never have anything at all to do with the elected representative.
Ever.
Even for constituency business the office staff will handle the bulk of the issues and a tree stump could be sitting in Parliament. How many Conservative MPs are not exactly ‘top notch’ ?
I am now sort of fascinated to see the end of this story and hope that Ms. Brosseau soon speaks up. In English if necessary. Who knows ? She might even be an acceptable MP when all is said and done and the voters in that riding should just mellow out and accept responsibility for their votes. They didn’t expect much of the candidate when they voted so they really don’t have much to whine about at this point.
It’s not Ruth Ellen Brosseau’s fault she won election…
Yes it is.
…now she’s going to have to uproot her life for the next four years and go be the MP…
No she doesn’t.
I dont get the NDP strategy here. I think they should have admitted that they had some MP’s who won who didnt expect to. Ms Brosseau should have been up front about her expectations and her abilities and then make committments to change or learn.
Quebecers would absolutley have bought into it, given that they participated in putting these people there. THe NDP cant win this situation now, because you cant learn fluent french in 2 weeks, even if you have a background in it.
Anyway, the cons should be careful to let these people sink or float on their own. Set the expectation bar too low and you risk creating heroes. Some of the accidental MP’s will work out to be reasonable, some will be disasters.
The Quebec vote was a case of Voter Irrational Exuberance.
Now they have four years of Voter Neglect and Regret
The real root cause is the $2/vote Tax imposed by the Cretin. It corrupted the process by being used as a money generating scam by the Political Parties. Otherwise it looks good on Quebec voters and it looks good on the NDP. Maybe Jack the Dripper will find that in the next 5 years while he is busy becoming the defacto Separatist Party of Canada, that Harper will wipe him out in Quebec in the next election. He will be back to the future. They say a dog always returns to his vomit, Jack has a lot of vomit to clean up.
You may not know much about the candidate, but their is an expectation they were vetted by the party in the interests of the party and the electorate.
Go down to the riding office, say hi, make sure the guy/gal isn’t a zombie. ~ Phantom
And if he/she is not up to your standard, then what do you do?
“…the fact is we vote for the PARTY. We don’t really much care who is representing the Party as for the most part the overwhelming majority of voters will never have anything at all to do with the elected representative.”
DougF hits the nail on the head, and illuminates both the point and the problem of party politics: The product of comprehensive coherent policy and accurate personal representation is a constant, and the tradeoff ratio gets steeper with the ratio of populace per representative. 308 people to represent 33 million could never decide on anything without the filter of prior organized party policies.
It doesn’t help that in any representational democracy, it is seldom if ever clear whether the representative has been elected to be an advocate for his constituents or a decision-maker on their behalf. Are you there to represent your voters and your party to Parliament, or are you there to represent Parliament and your party to your voters?
(I have to admit to wondering what Elizabeth May will do if some economic opportunity of immense benefit to her riding runs up against one of the Green Party’s planks. Campaigning on principle is always easier than selling the cost of those principles to your voters, as Barack Obama has painfully discovered.)
Rimshot: “It’s clear the voters of Berthier-Maskinongé were so eager to vote NDP — as were so many Quebec voters — that they didn’t care who the local candidate was, which is appropriate in this case, because the local candidate didn’t care either”
hahaha. That could have been written by Mark Steyn.
mhb23re
…it is seldom if ever clear whether the representative has been elected to be an advocate for his constituents or a decision-maker on their behalf. ~ Stephen J.
Agree. But if the parties were forced to define their ideologies with more rigor there would be fewer surprises.
Because the Green Party is ideological, I have little doubt what Elizabeth May would do when faced with the situation you describe.
They don’t have to do the work of campigning.
Lazy ‘consensus’ media did it for them.
Gunter is right…the electorate has been lazy too. They want the media to tell them how to think and what to feel.
It’s a symbionic relationship.
It’s evidence that Quebec voters are morons, what else needs to be said?
I have the maturity to remember the bitter capital punishment debate.
In Kitchener, Percy Saltzman, (Liberal?) voted against capital punishment despite awareness this ran counter to the opinions of his constituents.
Here locally, Wallace Nesbit, supported capital punishment and confided that he had no moral dilemma because to his best knowledge his constituents shared his position.
bryceman has nailed it. This mentality seems to depend upon territoriality….and crossesparty lines.
“For these people, it’s like cheering for a hockey team. You root for the team over years (even generations) without thought to the people on the ballot.”
The best anology for “fence-post Liberals” I have seen….from my personal prospective this is more a Liberal trait….perhaps because of exposure locally to this mentality….despite being in what is considered a safe conservative riding.
Voting by lable and the influence of the leadership debates……
This pattern is powerful enough to over-ride even a sex-scandal.
Quebec has always demonstrated a tendency to vote strategically, and turn on a dime….a hive mentality.
I think Election’s Canada should be investigated from the top down in Quebec and in Ottawa, what happened in Quebec makes a mockery of our democracy. Frankly I’m sick of EC giving the political left a free pass when they are caught doing stuff like this.
To call Quebec voters morons is not rite. They are still takers. Jacko said he would give them n the world so vote for Jacko. They will get all that Jacko can do for them,[to them]. You get what you vote for. Four years without. After 70 years in Sask. we have learned.NDP are takers not givers. Just the thoughts of an old man.
Rose,unfortunately Elections Canada investigates complaints and/or lays charges when THEY deem it to be in the public interest.
Enforcement is arbitrary.
My re-elected MP is quite well known to me, from two areas in which I’ve lived. He’s knowledgeable, hard-working, dedicated, reserved and straight up. No lightweight showboat, he! I was SO happy that he won; he deserved it!
Those Quebec voters who cast ballots for candidates who just put their names in, will have to muddle through. They’re their own worst enemies. How can anyone be that cavalier?
This just confirms that all or at least most of the attacks and criticisms of Mr. Harper’s anti-democratic nature etc. etc. were just a lot of B.S. and merely demonstrated the never deviating will to power by the Libs and NDP.
Surely, now, the press will be attacking Jack Lyton for the absolute dictatorial control he’s displaying in regards to this new children’s crusade from Quebec. Let them speak Jack! What do you mean you have to indoctrinate them first? Aren’t they all fire breathing NDP party members? Heck never mind the press. Let them at us!
The people of Quebec qre STUPID
Has Coren been reading/consulting SDA/Blue Like You?
Coren quote:
“Mr. Harper, you’re a genius.”
…-
http://www.ottawasun.com/2011/05/06/coren-not-all-iggys-fault
I think that the issue of whether or not there were falsified signatures on the nomination for Ms Brosseau may be the tip of a very ugly iceberg. Is it possible that the NDP machine systematically and fraudulently nominated candidates in ridings where they believed they had no chance to win just to collect the $2 per vote? As a minimum, Elections Canada should be required to validate the nomination papers of the NDP candidates in those ridings, as well as ridings in the rest of the country where the Dippers had no real chance of being elected. Is there any way that this could be referred to the RCMP by a citizens group such as the Canadian Taxpayers Federation?
In his column of yesterday in the N.P. Gunter shows how Quebec, by following blindly Layton’s dictats, has tied its own shoelaces together. by voting blindly and giving 19 year-olds $150 thou a year, they have given themselves into the hands of the Conservatives, a party most rejected; but the one positive is that Gilles can shamble off into political and historical obscurity.
Most voters (and many MPs) are ignorant of the whole process. A coworker said he was not voting for Harper. I told him I was not voting for Harper either. He thought he met a fellow traveller until I expanded my answer to include I (and he) could not vote for Mr Harper as we do not live in Calgary South West. His response? “You know what I mean!”. I doubt he knew the name let alone the biography of the local candidate for whom he did vote.
During the campaign, I received a phone call from the NDP on behalf of their local candidate seeking re-election (he won a by election in 2009). They went on about how effective he was as an MP. I asked what he had done for New Westminster. They babbled on how he had been an environmental advocate before he was elected. I stopped the caller at that point and again asked what he had done AS AN MP which made him “effective”. The caller’s only response was the MP had called for federal funding of a local LRT line. I followed up by asking if he had secured federal funding for the LRT line or even secured the commitment of the government to study funding for the LRT line. Anyone, including me, can “call” for federal funding. Asking is easy, getting is another kettle of fish! I that point the caller hung up on me.
Too many voters equate an MP making a lot of noise in the local media as “effective representation”. No, that is being a loudmouth media whore. Getting things done: problems solved, bring home the bacon, righting real wrongs is effective representation.
Hard to read that column. Gunter really makes this lady sound like the victim here. I haven’t got much sympathy for the folks that voted for her either, but she’s the victim? Seriously? I can think of worse things than waking up one morning and finding that you’re the MP for X or Y riding and you’ll have to spend your next 4 years in the house of commons. If she can’t handle the crap that goes with the job, then that I’m afraid is her problem.
What happened in Quebec is an example of the collectivist mind at work.
It should be noted that the main feature of the collectivist mind is that it is mindless.
DougF is of course spot on.
Personally, I vote for the party.
The candidate is irrelevant.
It could be a puppy.
It could be a East Hastings addict/hooker.
It matters not one whit what he/she/it thinks.
He/she/it is whipped.
Under our current system, Parliament could consist of three guys/gals: CPC, Lib, and NDP leaders. Period.
I vote Conservative, period, knowing full well it’s not “conservative”. I vote for the least socialist PARTY, period.
I’ve never attended a candidates debate. Total waste of time. I have zero delusions about being a “responsible voter”.
You are an idiot if you vote for a candidate sight unseen. In every Federal election there are all candidate forums. Even if you don’t attend, the local paper will have a report. It will be bias, but oh well it will give you some kind of clue – Did he/she show up? Did he/she spout nonsense? – the letters to the editor will also give clues. Have we (the conservative blogosphere) become so glued to our screens that we isolate ourselves from everything but Kate, Ezra and Sun media? Have we become so media bias that we don’t dare pick up the local paper?
Get out and go to the coffee shop, or MacDonalds. Talk to people. Ask, “Have you scene or met the local candidate?”
The people of Quebec did what they always have done (prove me wrong). They voted en masse. Look at the historical record. You see La Belle Province swinging totally Liberal, totally Conservative (Mulroney), totally Liberal again, totally Bloc and now totally NDP. Are they mindless? Are they sheep?
Look at their religious heritage? They were once the most religious people on earth – highest percentage church goers in North America, highest birthrate, even up to the 1950’s. Now they are the least religious, or irreligious, lowest percent of weekly church attendance anywhere in Nor.America. What’s my point? They run like a herd to wherever they are going, even if that is over a political cliff of NPD clown/socialism.
I met my local conservative candidate at a community-wide Good Friday service. I talked with him for 10 minutes (didn’t see the NDP, Liberal or Green candidate there). One commentator I heard on CBC (yea, I listen, when I am in my car on occasion – no other talk radio available except NPR – please don’t ban me from SDA) said it was those nasty conservatives beating the streets, coffee shops and senior’s homes that did us in. IN OTHER WORDS, THEY WERE VISIBLE.
Would I vote conservative sight unseen? I don’t know THEY NEVER GAVE ME THAT OPPORTUNITY. the nasty b________!
Again, where were the heads of the Quebecers? Or what kind of juice were they on?
“Me No Dhimmi” – change your name. You are a dhimmi, if you vote sight unseen. Use your head. Get involved locally.
This episode has exposed a serious flaw in the electoral process, the $2 per vote subsidy,and gives good reason to end it immediately.
I’m a construction subcontractor,not by any means immune to the vagaries of the market,and right now that market’s DOWN,big time, and I’m supposed to Feel” for a young woman who’s just been handed a $155,000 per year job for the next five years!
And all she has to do to collect her salary,is SHOW UP once in a while!
Get your ass in gear young lady,take French lessons,hire some bilingual locals to staff your office,and try your best to represent your Riding.
“And all she has to do to collect her salary,is SHOW UP once in a while!”
Hey, 30% was good enough for Iggy…
Most voters (and many MPs) are ignorant of the whole process. A coworker said he was not voting for Harper. I told him I was not voting for Harper either. He thought he met a fellow traveller until I expanded my answer to include I (and he) could not vote for Mr Harper as we do not live in Calgary South West. His response? “You know what I mean!”.
He may be ignorant but he not that wrong – given the Canadian parliamentary tradition of strict party discipline and the growth of the PMO over the past couple decades, you are effectively voting for the party leader. Not that you shouldn’t care whether your local party candidate is some skeez or deadweight with no shot at Cabinet or making effective representation if elected, but the individual legislator matters less here than in many (most?) other democracies.
The good news is that she could sit in the MP’s chair during the day and still collect tips at the Carleton University bar at night.
Best of both worlds.
I think it would be great if one of the ‘investigative’ reporters from the P-press gallery would take some time and check out the NDP candidates from across the country,or even just those in Quebec.They must have extra time on their hands with only 34 Liberals to praise.
It would not be surprising to find that many (elected and defeated) do not live in the ridings,perhaps many live and work very close to Tom Mulcair’s riding and were part of his campaign team.
I contend that a large number of the candidates were duped into representing the NDP. Will they be able to stand up to the pressure and media scrutiny? What will they do if a in-depth background check reveals a skeleton or two,or even a whole cemetery in their closets?
OTOH,there are still 34 Liberals to follow around.
Whether you get the government you deserve, I believe that you get the representative you deserve when you do something like this. These constituents can not help but be poorly represented, it seems to me. Never been to the riding? Doesn’t speak french? Unless, of course, they hire the former BQ MPs people. It more and more looks like the BQ has attempted a hostile takeover of the NDP, doesn’t it?
As far as experience goes, when Bob Rae’s NDP took Ontario they were about ready to govern as a high school debating team. The MP in Thunder Bay North was an absolute embarrassment. It’s a good thing these guys and gals are only in opposition. I think I’ll enjoy this. Especially when the guy that looks about 14 starts demanding the Prime Minister do something for him. I hope he has a real high voice.
Excellent comments! One thing I’d like to expand upon is what an incredible gift to Harper & Co. these NDP newbies are. In times past the Media Party would only throw them softballs, knowing that asking them tough questions would only help Harper. But with the growing effect of Sun News TV, the rest of the MSM will now actually have to … wait for it … do their jobs.
Based on the Law of Averages, I’m confident that some of these new MPs will actually be quite good and be excellent representatives of their party. But some are bound to be dreadful.
As a constituent in Hedy Fry’s riding, I’ve long waited for a dumber, more inept MP than her. I think that time has finally arrived!!!
I wish I had the money to buy the movie rights. What a cool Animal House – meets – Legally Blonde comedy this would make…
@ Kathy Shaidle, here’s a working title for your movie:
QC NDP Girls are Easy, To Get Elected.
The NDP did not win Quebec! Quebec won the NDP Party! The French strike a deadly blow & nobody can see the road ahead….
Jack is the helpless one…New Leader in Works!
Here’s the Comedy Segment of SDA today: NDP Vegas’ first interview
“It was quite a shock to see the results on election night,” she said, accompanied by an NDP communications manager. “When they asked me to put my name, I agreed. […] It was only symbolic.”
Brosseau has not yet visited her constituency, but she intends to do so soon. “I can not wait to get there. I was told it was a very beautiful area.”
The next 4 years are going to be hilarious!
It’s not Ruth Ellen Brosseau’s fault she won election to the House of Commons in Monday’s election. Heaven knows she didn’t want to win or expect to win, or even try to win.
Wrong.
You don’t win the lottery if you don’t buy a ticket.
It IS Ruth Ellen Brosseau’s fault she won election to the House of Commons in Monday’s election.
Nobody forced her to run for MP and her attitude toward politics is unforgivably unserious.
If the CPC had gotten another minority the fact that Ruth Ellen Brosseau held an NDP seat would have been very serious indeed.
‘One NDP supporter in Ms. Brosseau’s new riding asked the other day whether he and his fellow voters where victims of some sort of scam. No, sir, not victims — participants.’
This sentence, IMO, is the key to the entire article. It does not make sense that the voters changed their vote if they did not believe that the move would benefit them and Quebec. The citizens of Quebec have been milking the west via the threat to ‘leave’ for 5 or 6 decades. The blocistas spouted culture and language and ‘different’ (translating into ‘superior in their own backward minds) as the reasons for the citizens of Quebec to vote for them; in reality, it was, of course, all about the ‘free money’ from western Canada (Ontario and the Maritimes were in on this mindset too). As PMSH said again and again and again during the election: the table was set for a coalition takeover if the Conservatives did not get a majority. Quebekers knew that the west would kick up a big stink if the blocista were needed in that coalition because they are a separatist party; the GG might not grant the Dipper/Liberano/Blocista Troika the keys to the treasury and the whole election would ‘cost’ yet another election or the west (the piggy bank) would move out and deprive all the ‘pipples’ of their ‘entitlements’. The Quebeckers voted NDP to legitimize the planned ‘coup’. Simple. How could the GG refuse two Federal Parties (Liberano/Dipper) the keys? This was not a dumb dumb vote or a sudden ‘orange crush’ – it was planned and it was planned with revenues from the riches of Alta, B.C. and Sask in mind. The Eastern elites were planning to bring the west to ‘heel’.
Thankfully Ontario citizens woke up one day and realized that their pensions and the future of their children might get sold down the river to make Quebec happy; as had happened before under such an ‘arrangement’. People voted for the Conservatives because the Conservatives were the party of the piggy bank (the west).
Many baby boomers are on the edge of retirement, they want their ‘entitlements’ (the gument workers come to the top of my mind as entrepreneurs, like my ranching uncles in their eighties, never retire) and those people are clever enough to know that a nation needs production to pay the pensioners. The cynical Liberal supporters, outside Quebec, voted for themselves (pensions) and some could have even voted for the futures of their children and grandchildren. Quebckers got toasted by the Troika! Jack of the community clinics lost – big time- because he is not in the cookie jar, he is a beggar at the gates in a foreign land.
Georgie Porgie (Soarows)has lost a round in Canada. Who would have thought that we would be the nation to fire the first shot into the heart of the evil Global Elites who wish to enslave all the people who live in the world?
PMSH deserves most of the credit for this victory for Canada because he took on the Troika and the msm for us and for the future of freedom in Canada, and he won! SDA, some other conservative blogs and Sun TV deserve all of the credit for exposing the Troika in their filthy underwear (or not); it is a new age for Canada that we are celebrating. Lorne could have and should have told the ‘rest of the story’ instead of taking a subtle swipe at the whole sorry tale.
Interesting analysis, Jema. Very well written!
I don’t quite agree with your analysis of Ontario voters though. My sense is that many of those new to voting for the Tories did so because:
– They no longer were “scared” of Harper
– They generally liked his mgmt during the 2008/09 crisis
– They were not at all convinced about Iggy
– They, like us in the West, were sick of constant minority gov’t squabbles and voted for stability
You have to listen to her interview here :
http://www.cyberpresse.ca/le-nouvelliste/actualites/201105/06/01-4397108-ruth-ellen-brosseau-sort-de-son-mutisme.php?utm_categorieinterne=trafficdrivers&utm_contenuinterne=cyberpresse_B4_manchettes_231_accueil_POS1
She can’t even pronounce the riding name BTW.
Who can understand the French. They will pay though for this stupidity.
Nice post Jema 54 @2:59
An apt analogy might be to take away a junkie’s fix and watch him get creative.
Quebecers are not the sophisticated voters that Iggy touted them to be…not by half!
The sobering thought of losing their daily financial fix is more than enough to cause then en masse to try to work the system to their advantage.
Not this time my friends quit your panhandling ways and put your financial house in order.
I have been waiting somewhat patiently for anyone to explain the mess in the Quebec voting pattern.
The decision to go with smilin Jack has no logic and defies explanation.
After all the speculation about the wherefore and why, we remain with the question: why did so many throw away their franchise as citizens.
How we respond to this foolish waste of democracy is going to be very interesting indeed.
I hope someone with a lot more understanding than I have and can capture the essence of this debacle will speak up!