In Canada, a Conservative MP crossed the floor to the Liberals while another...

Is going to retire after seemingly also having contemplated crossing the floor but was told there would be "consequences"

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/conservative-matt-jeneroux-resigns-9.6970100

Nice to see Conservatives with scruples literally turning against the "Mini-Trump" leadership of Pierre Poilievre. Fuck that guy.

The one that is retiring shouldn't have run in the election. What a waste of time

Wish American Republicans had
A. Balls
or
B. Were actually not evil pieces of shit.

hahayeah right

You guys are still dealing with Poiliwrath? He's not done being embarrassed?

Starks posted...

You guys are still dealing with Poiliwrath? He's not done being embarrassed?

Yeah. Dude lost his own seat and then stole another's seat to still be allowed to be the leader. Now he has had one member cross the floor and apparently others thinking to do the same thing. Dude is a fucking embarrassment.

Its worth noting Canadian politics don't really work the same as American politics - Its kind of a big deal someone was allowed to cross parties like that, because you don't really vote for the person, even at the MP/MPP level. You vote for your favoured party to represent your spot, and that's the guy the party has put there. Add to that, if you go against the party line, the party can literally boot you from your riding and just put someone else in. Because your riding belongs to the party, not to you. This is why when Pollievre lost his seat, he just kicked someone out in literally the safest seat possible (note: Pollievre's seat used to be considered very safe) and took his place.

It'll be interesting to see what actually happens to the conservatives right now - Carney is just governing like a conservative PM would basically, just without the blatant attacks on like, random minorities like the conservatives in the States is doing. All of the conservatives who pretend to vote blue because of taxes should be happy here. They aren't, because they don't actually believe in anything, but that's besides the point.

If anyone doesn't know about Pierre Pollievre, imagine Donald Trump, but without any charisma. Just a boring loser who's never accomplished anything whining all the time.

You're talking about it more in practice, not in what actually is supposed to happen.

Canada at its core does not have a representative government, it has responsible government. At its core you are voting for the PERSON you think will do the job best and are tasking them with the responsibility of that. You're not voting for someone who represents your every view.

The MP who crossed clearly thought that the responsible thing to do, in order to get the best results for his riding, was to work with the current Liberal party rather than whatever is going on with the Cons.

The Cons didn't win the seat, the man did as a member of the Conservative Party.

This happened in my hometown riding when the NDP gal there broke from the NDP on the issue of gay marriage, voting against it. She didn't lose the seat and became independent. She couldn't run as an NDP the next time around though, clearly.

He accomplished a lot. He gets to retire with a great pension that most people won't see. That is the only accomplishment. Him getting rid of 900k affordable housing options was a tragedy.

Its really funny how 10 years ago Carney would be a conservative. Hes mostly a center rightist but with how far right the conservatives have gotten under PP the regular conservatives don't want anything to do with that.

Proto_Spark posted...

Its worth noting Canadian politics don't really work the same as American politics - Its kind of a big deal someone was allowed to cross parties like that, because you don't really vote for the person, even at the MP/MPP level. You vote for your favoured party to represent your spot, and that's the guy the party has put there. Add to that, if you go against the party line, the party can literally boot you from your riding and just put someone else in. Because your riding belongs to the party, not to you. This is why when Pollievre lost his seat, he just kicked someone out in literally the safest seat possible (note: Pollievre's seat used to be considered very safe) and took his place.

It'll be interesting to see what actually happens to the conservatives right now - Carney is just governing like a conservative PM would basically, just without the blatant attacks on like, random minorities like the conservatives in the States is doing. All of the conservatives who pretend to vote blue because of taxes should be happy here. They aren't, because they don't actually believe in anything, but that's besides the point.

If anyone doesn't know about Pierre Pollievre, imagine Donald Trump, but without any charisma. Just a boring loser who's never accomplished anything whining all the time.

The party cannot unilaterally boot somebody from a riding. The guy who Poilievre stole the seat of? He had to step down, he was likely offered something big to do so. You are in fact voting for the person not the party.

The most a party can do is boot a person out of the party but this isn't exactly a concern if the person is crossing the isle and joining a different party.

McmadnessV3 posted...

Its really funny how 10 years ago Carney would be a conservative. Hes mostly a center rightist but with how far right the conservatives have gotten under PP the regular conservatives don't want anything to do with that.

The reformist within the party took over under harper. They pushed out the progressive Conservative out of power to pull up on top. The challenge of the leader is to reign in the different sides because east and west coast will have divergent ideas on what that means. This is why the floor crosser changed as he was already closer to the liberals in belief from the Atlantic.

Jeff_AKA_Snoopy posted...

The Cons didn't win the seat, the man did as a member of the Conservative Party.

The Cons did win the seat, and they chose this guy as the representative. But then there's an issue of if the Cons kick this dude out of "their" seat - it triggers a special election, and really the only party capable of running an election right now is the liberals (which is why its super weird the Cons are threatening to say no to the budget and trigger an election, but whatever).

Not to mention the party just kicking someone out of their seat is wildly unpopular (for good reason) and the Cons don't have very much momentum right now to begin with. The Cons basically just said "this isn't a hill worth dying on", but also why they're threatening any other cons from changing sides as well. If they just kicked this guy out of his seat, it would probably be much worse for them trying to deal with all of these other cons debating bailing on the party.

The good thing here is that this is sort of a sign the Conservative Party is falling apart (which tbf, it has been fracturing since Stephen Harper left). They're trying to keep people from jumping off the sinking ship.

Proto_Spark posted...

The Cons did win the seat, and they chose this guy as the representative. But then there's an issue of if the Cons kick this dude out of "their" seat - it triggers a special election, and really the only party capable of running an election right now is the liberals (which is why its super weird the Cons are threatening to say no to the budget and trigger an election, but whatever).

You have absolutely no idea how Parliament works. That seat belongs to the person who won it until they choose to resign or lose the next election (which they almost certainly would, because most of the voting public correctly treats their vote as for a party than for a particular representative).

Proto_Spark posted...

The Cons did win the seat, and they chose this guy as the representative. But then there's an issue of if the Cons kick this dude out of "their" seat - it triggers a special election, and really the only party capable of running an election right now is the liberals (which is why its super weird the Cons are threatening to say no to the budget and trigger an election, but whatever).

Not to mention the party just kicking someone out of their seat is wildly unpopular (for good reason) and the Cons don't have very much momentum right now to begin with. The Cons basically just said "this isn't a hill worth dying on", but also why they're threatening any other cons from changing sides as well. If they just kicked this guy out of his seat, it would probably be much worse for them trying to deal with all of these other cons debating bailing on the party.

The good thing here is that this is sort of a sign the Conservative Party is falling apart (which tbf, it has been fracturing since Stephen Harper left). They're trying to keep people from jumping off the sinking ship.

Again, the party can't kick somebody out of their seat.

Jeneroux (the one that's resigning) isn't doing so until the spring, so he can still vote against the budget. We'll have to see whether he does of not, but he isn't doing this out of the goodness of his heart. He was really looking forward to a cabinet post before PP (luckily) blew it for them. Now that he qualifies for his pension, he's out of there.

I don't think Pierre is like Trump, he seems more like a Ted Cruz.

__starsnostars posted...

I don't think Pierre is like Trump, he seems more like a Ted Cruz.

He definitely lacks the cult of personality that Trump has.

Enclave posted...

He definitely lacks the cult of personality that Trump has.

Mostly because a decent amount of Canadians saw through what he was doing and called him out on it. I recall a bunch of polls of Canadians before our last election was asking who Canadians felt confident could stand up to Trump, and Pollievre was not high on those polls cause he comes across like the biggest fucking bootlicker in the world.

Given the total collapse of the NDP in the last election (their leader lost his seat and they fell to 7 seats), it's weird that the Liberals haven't tried to recruit what's left of them and create a majority government.

Red_XIV posted...

Given the total collapse of the NDP in the last election (their leader lost his seat and they fell to 7 seats), it's weird that the Liberals haven't tried to recruit what's left of them and create a majority government.

Because the Liberals and NDP are not that closely aligned. NDP are a working class party that tends to be more on the progressive side. Liberals are liberals, very much corporate friendly and love to be centrists.

Back in 2011 similar happened to the Liberals. They obviously recovered and the NDP can as well.

Proto_Spark posted...

Its worth noting Canadian politics don't really work the same as American politics - Its kind of a big deal someone was allowed to cross parties like that, because you don't really vote for the person, even at the MP/MPP level. You vote for your favoured party to represent your spot, and that's the guy the party has put there. Add to that, if you go against the party line, the party can literally boot you from your riding and just put someone else in. Because your riding belongs to the party, not to you. This is why when Pollievre lost his seat, he just kicked someone out in literally the safest seat possible (note: Pollievre's seat used to be considered very safe) and took his place.

None of this is accurate.

Yes, you do vote for your MP/MLA, not the party they belong to. Once they're in, they're in; they're not beholden to the party brass and the only thing the party can do if an elected official "goes rogue" is withhold resources from them or kick them out of the party. They cannot, as you're alleging here, force them out of their seat and replace them with someone else. If an MP or MLA resigns, the party doesn't get to fill their seat; a byelection is called and someone else is elected to fill the seat, which may be someone from a different party.

Pollievre didn't force someone to resign; he lost his seat in the last election and it both looks really bad for a party to not have their leader holding a seat and also limits their visibility and what they can do, so the party would have reached out to its MPs in safe seats and found one willing to resign so that Pollievre could run in the subsequent byelection. Which is exactly what happened; Pollievre didn't just immediately take over the seat, he had to be voted in.

You might be thinking of the fact that we don't vote for the Prime Minister/Premieres, because your post would be accurate to that process. The Prime Minister (at the federal level) or the Premiere (at the provincial level) is whoever the House of Commons/Legislature respectively says it is (in practice, always the leader of the party with the most seats); the HoC/Legislature can remove that person at any time and replace them with someone else, no new election necessary.

The floor crossings are still a big deal, because the Liberals have a narrow minority government, holding 170 of the 343 seats in parliament, which means they can't pass bills without the support of another party (almost always the left-wing NDP) and could be brought down at any time by a no confidence vote, forcing a new election. If the Liberals can find two more MPs willing to cross the floor, they'll have a majority and will be in a much more stable position.

I disagree with them being in a much more stable position. Minority government is forced to work with others. That's how it should be.

eggcorn posted...

Wish American Republicans had
A. Balls
or
B. Were actually not evil pieces of shit.

hahayeah right

That would make them RINOs.

Red_XIV posted...

Given the total collapse of the NDP in the last election (their leader lost his seat and they fell to 7 seats), it's weird that the Liberals haven't tried to recruit what's left of them and create a majority government.

I mean, they very well may have reached out to some of them. That doesn't mean they'd join. I mean, one of them is interim leader and a couple more of running for permanent leadership. Most of them are fairly progressive, which Carney is not.

darkknight109 posted...

(in practice, always the leader of the party with the most seats)

it's a party leader but not always the one with the most seats, like BC in 2017. The Liberals had the most seats but the NDP and Greens teamed up and had more, meaning the NDP took control as they had the confidence of the legislature.

Sir_Will posted...

it's a party leader but not always the one with the most seats, like BC in 2017. The Liberals had the most seats but the NDP and Greens teamed up and had more, meaning the NDP took control as they had the confidence of the legislature.

I'm counting coalitions, informal or otherwise, as having "the most seats" (mostly because laying out edge cases for the purposes of completeness is annoying).

Red_XIV posted...

Given the total collapse of the NDP in the last election (their leader lost his seat and they fell to 7 seats), it's weird that the Liberals haven't tried to recruit what's left of them and create a majority government.

When the floor crossing happened, the media mentioned that the Liberals have been trying to recruit select members of all the parties. Theyve only succeeded so far with the one Conservative.

Stagmar posted...

When the floor crossing happened, the media mentioned that the Liberals have been trying to recruit select members of all the parties. Theyve only succeeded so far with the one Conservative.

Ndp and bloc would have none of it. It's not surprising that the Conservatives that like to have power would do so. They are the most closely aligned with the liberals in some aspect.