No

Yes.

(To Beyers' suggestion.)

I suspect that Beyers knows quite well how our first-past-the-post electoral system works.

The smarter majority vote for either the Libs (because they believe in the rhetoric but are afraid to pursue it to its logical conclusions) or the NDP (because they wisely can't stomach the Liberals' empty promises and revolting practices), and far too often, this splitting of the vote allows the choice of the less appealing segment of the electorate to push their knuckle-dragging candidate up through the middle and we get the mess we've got now.

The Liberals are not as nauseatingly stupid and dangerous to democracy as are the harpercons. Even I believe this and I wish the Liberal Party would implode.

In ridings where the Liberals polled higher than the NDP, the NDP should bow out. In ridings where the NDP polled higher, the Liberals should bow out.

We can make this deal contingent upon implementing proportional representation for the next election (no bullshit "public consultations") but if we're going to get rid of the harpercons, this is the only way to go about doing it.

And i don't say that with any particular joy.

I'm all for electoral reform. And while I'm aware that the NDP mention support for it somewhere in their platform I think it's fair to ask why it isn't a lot more prominent if they're prepared to go such great lengths to achieve it.

Byers' suggestion amounts to sabotaging the electoral process to save it. I suspect that a lot of voters would be turned off by this deal, it would backfire and it would taint the idea of electoral reform at the same time. His article is full of "arrangements" that could be made. That's the problem. Those arrangements aren't up to him.

Choosing not to run in an election hardly amounts to sabotage. I mean, you could just as easily accuse me of sabotaging the election because anyone who wants to vote for me is unable to do so.

True, some people would be forced to hold their nose and vote for someone they would ordinarily not have supported, but lets face it, most people do that anyway.

Yeah pogge,

They don't have an obligation to run candidates in every riding. The Bloc Quebecois doesn't give us the option to vote for them outside of Quebec. It's the party's decision, not ours. We vote for the candidates we're given.

As for turned off voters, ... anyone who would vote harpercon already, or in response to an attempt to remove a dangerous, criminal, bone-stupid political party from power would vote harpercon, ought to be forced to do so.

Here I might be cutting off my nose to spite my face, but i find it revolting that i have to worry about the sentiments of such people.

Fight collusion with collusion. What do you call this demonic coalition of the Reformers, the Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives if not anti democratic collusion. For the good of the country they need to be stopped.

If this were anytime but the present, I would have agreed with you. Unfortunately I think that Canadian politics and to much degree, government, has devolved to a point where its about power and friends and destruction of your opposition. Whereas it should be about leading, ideas and governing in the interest of all people. An NDP/Liberal agreement in this regard, could potentially reboot the whole system and get us back, or at least reverse the current slide, back to where politics and government should be.

NO.

I don't agree with Beyers' opinion.

If the opposition parties want to do something right (and keep the Cons out of power), they would combine their efforts on a bill that would introduce Proportional Representation, something the NDP has promised for years (and has never acted on).

Unfortunately, the Bloc would never support this, but it would give the Liberals (and NDP) moral superiority.

Following that, we would be guaranteed a minority government ALL the time, but I'm OK with that, as it would shove the Cons into oblivion (former CRAP party reps would re-emerge and tear the party apart).

Well, back in 2006, Ed Broadbent was working on putting something forward for electoral reform and the libs squashed that.
And the NDP does have a positive policy - voted on at convention past - on the books.
I would wonder about Beyer's idea in relationship to where the contest is between libs & NDP. The cons are not a factor - would it still mean pull out?
Also, in relation to the Greens in that riding - the Greens didn't come 2nd, but the libs did - so it would require the 2nd place libs to stand down.

Finally, and to put it bluntly, can the libs be trusted? This is not rhetorical but based on libs past practice as "breaking promises."
Just recently, Iggy disavowed the coalition partnership, one that he signed (a contract).
Going back in Lib history is huge promises that they campaigned on and broke - GST anyone evoke a memory? Or how about renegotiating NAFTA? Those biggies come to mind but there are more.
The liberals cannot be trusted.

That said, not sure what Beyer is going on about when he suggested the NDP dropping the ball "on climate change."
The NDP just put forward their bill for climate change again, and it was the libs "who dropped the ball" and tossed it under the bridge. So don't understand what he's talking about.

Further to jan's point about Liberal behaviour on similar turf: Central Nova, anyone?

Jan raises the objections on practical grounds that I didn't get to because I had already objected on theoretical grounds. But if we want to go there, I would point out that attempts like this to do deals based on how people predict voters will react generally fail. Voters are sometimes unpredictable and can be even more so when they feel they're being taken for granted.

I don't see this happening, but I politely object to anyone claiming that it is somehow anti-democratic. First, our system already is anti-democratic and this solution is more of a remedy to that then a source of problem. Next, anyone can run regardless of party deals. If you are a potential candidate for a party that declines to run a candidate, you can always run anyway.

You may not be running for that Party, but our system is already placing far too much emphasis on political parties, to the point now, for instance, where suggesting not having a person run for one in a riding is now anti-democratic. *sigh*

Now, less I be labelled a supporter of this idea, let me be clear: I really detest the level of influence political parties have over our elected representatives. At this point, I'd rather political parties be banned; which is to say, they have no rules or laws favouring them.

But, given what we have to work with, a loose coalition -- which won't happen -- is more democratic than a Harper majority gained with a minority of voters.

There was a time to do this, and that was the 1988 free trade election. The election produced an outcome a majority of the Canadian electorate probably didn't want (the trade agreement with the US) due to vote splitting between the NDP and Liberals, mainly in Ontario. And this was very much a single issue election, and an important single issue, something that Broadbent realized too late. To defend the NDP, polls during the previous four years indicated that they had a real chance of overtaking the Liberals, and might have had the election essentially not be a single issue election.

However, absent a single issue election such as 1988, or a Conservative party that is really as "scary" as the Liberals claim (sorry, the current version just isn't that scary, its actually to the left of the Democrats in the US), there is no reason to do this. The NDP and Liberals are two separate parties with too separate visions of Canada. The Liberals are simply much more corporatist. The NDP actually has a populist strain that it shares with the Conservatives, and which is not present with the Liberals at all.

Except for 1988 and the aftermath in the 1990s, the NDP has been able to advance its agenda through provincial politics, and sometimes holding the federal balance of power, also by threatening to displace the Liberals if they move too far to the right. There is no reason to change this.

Note that the Socialists in Germany supported Hindenburg's relection in 1932 to stop Hitler. And Hindenburg won. And he appointed Hitler chanceller! Even in the clearest possible case of the need for a popular front, to stop Hitler of all people, it failed. It failed because the more moderate parts of the coalition couldn't be trusted.

Sorry to invoke Godwin's law. Even in 1988, a Lib-NDP pact would only have helped in Ontario. It would have done nothing in Quebec, which the Conservates dominated, same with the West, which was more of a Conservative-NDP fight, or the Atlantic provinces, where the Liberals mostly won comfortably.

Someone really has to explain what the Conservatives are doing to make a pact essential (and note that even when it is it will likely fail). What concrete policy is a Harper government pursuing that a Liberal government would not pursue? And if the stakes are that high, why not just joint the Liberals and persuade Canadians to vote for them?

This certainly seems to have gotten people talking which is good even if most of them don't agree with me. But I don't think this objection is phrased properly:

...our system is already placing far too much emphasis on political parties, to the point now, for instance, where suggesting not having a person run for one in a riding is now anti-democratic.

I'm objecting to the artificial limitation on the options available to voters in a riding through a deal made at party hq. That's what we're talking about. It's manipulation by people (like Byers) who presume to know what I need better than I do. And while you're right that a candidate who was told to stand down could always run as an independent, I can just imagine that candidate scrambling to replace the resources and the organization that would otherwise have come from the party. Or I can imagine a lot of people in a lot of local riding associations telling party hq to stuff it and damaging the two parties involved. Can you say backlash?

the current version just isn't that scary, its actually to the left of the Democrats in the US

Written in reference to the Conservative party and I have to disagree. The Conservatives are currently governing with a minority in an environment where they know that pushing their luck too far will inspire a united opposition. The Conservatives with a majority could govern a lot differently and I think we've seen enough clues to conclude that they would.

I don't doubt that there will be skeptical and angered supporters for both the Liberals and NDP. What they need to do then is give these people to support the strategy. It's easier said then done but I think we'll all be better off for it for the simple fact that the election may actually be about ideas for once, something that the last few have sorely lacked. It's supposed to be, theoretically, a one time action. It can't be about power and just sticking it to the Conservatives. This can only work if the issues are front and centre and not personalities or red-herrings or rhetoric.

Well, if Byers follows his own recommendations I guess he won't be seeking the NDP nomination in Vancouver Centre next time, as that seat is held by Liberal incumbent Hedy Fry. That's a surprise, actually, it has been assumed he was headed in that direction.

I don't like electoral gang-ups. They have been used against the CCF/NDP over the years, and here in B.C. they have taken a variety of forms, Lib-Con Coalition, Social Credit, BC Liberals, and the next label yet to be chosen sometime after Premier Gordon M. Campbell's latest iteration loses power.

I think the parliamentary system with a presumption that the most seats means the right to form a government is one that works in favour of labour and social democrats in the long run, ... once they learn to over come certain {ahem} organizing difficulties. Nova Scotia is the latest example, and yes, I realize Dexter had a parliamentary majority and a healthy 45% of the vote, but in quarters where the NDP is hated 45% isn't enough, and there may yet be demands for some kind of coalition. We'll see in years to come.