I have met the guy, he is a pious asshole, and he misssed TWICE the amount of votes over the MP's average..........(AND THIS GUY is not a back bencher, he is an important MP. BUT missing this many votes is even unexcusable for a back bencher.

yep, american reps and sens do it all the time, I really hate it. I feel like I'm wasting my money. They are there to do a job and not voting is shirking their responsibilites, I know exactly how you feel.

We need some sort of fucking laws that bind congressman/women to only be aloud a certain amount of days off...

Would have voted Canadian Action Party, however they did not have a representative in my riding, thus I voted NDP. 72% of the people in my riding voted Conservative.

I voted Conservatives to prevent the erosion of our rights. You should've too, instead of voting for the same tired shit. Anyone voting Liberal at this point loses my respect; I have to agree that every party has its ups and downs but Cons were the most appropriate for now.

In any case, we've won a minor battle, but let's see how the war turns out...

[quote:49201]Doesn't Stephen Harper look like
the kind of actor a US or US-but-
produced-in-Canada TV show uses
as the bad guy when they can't
afford a British actor?

(Which, when David Warner is still
working, is kind of unimaginable.
But still.)

You know the kind of guy. Grey
hair, so white you can practically
see through his skin into his
circulatory system, with the kind
of unblinking half-glower that let's
you know that no matter what he's
talking about, he's actually thinking
about shoving pregnant lesbians
tits-first into a woodchipper. He's
the white guy in the suit whose last
job was sitting behind a big desk
condemning Tia Carrere to death
in an episode of RELIC HUNTER.

Paul Martin should never have let on
that he was desperate. And now
he's in the bin and you're ruled by
the guy who plays Creepy Vice-
President in Sci-Fi Channel shows.

And, yes, I'm kicking my heels while
waiting for the funeral arrangements.
My girls are off to America on
holiday this week, so they're going
to miss the funeral. Which kind of
suits me, to be honest. The funeral
itself, I can handle. It's the thing
after it I hate, where you go back
to the house and the family's
supposed to lay on food and booze
and a bunch of relatives crawl out
of the woodwork to get shitfaced
and have a good laugh. I hate that.
I disappear after the service.

So I'm on my own for a couple of
weeks, from tomorrow. Weird
timing. Obviously, I'm not going to
be around much for the next few
days, but after that I imagine you
can expect a flurry of drunken,
paranoid, isolated ravings.
[/quote:49201]

Ahaha...that's the funniest thing i've read all day.

Once again, Canada's antiquated first-past-the-post system wasted millions of votes, distorted results, severely punished large blocks of voters, exaggerated regional differences, created an unrepresentative Parliament, and may possibly have even given us the wrong government.

[Note: The following commentary is based on returns at 1:00am EST, January 24, 2006.]

The chief victims of the January 23 federal election were:

# Western Liberals: In the prairie provinces, Conservatives got three times as many votes as Liberals did, but won nearly ten times as many seats. In Alberta, the Conservative Party won 100% of the seats with 65% of the votes. The 500,000 Albertans who voted otherwise elected no one.

# Urban Conservatives: The 400,000-plus Conservative voters in Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver should have been able to elect about nine MPs, but instead elected no one. The three cities together will not have a single MP in the governing caucus, let alone the cabinet.

# New Democrats: The NDP attracted a million more votes than the Bloc, but the voting system gave the Bloc 51 seats, the NDP 29. Nearly 18% of Canadians voted NDP, but the party won less than 10% of the seats and does not hold the balance of power, unlike the Liberals and the Bloc.

# Green Party: More than 650,000 Green Party voters across the country elected no one, while 475,000 Liberal voters in Atlantic Canada elected 20 MPs.

# Federalists and nationalists: As usual, the voting system turned entire regions of Canada into partisan fiefdoms, rather than allowing the diversity of views in all regions to be fairly represented in Parliament and within each national party.


"How can anyone continue to think that this voting system gives us good geographic representation," said Wayne Smith, President of Fair Vote Canada, "when it fragments and divides our country like this?"

"Had results been fair, it is possible that we may have even seen a different government," said Smith. "The Liberals, NDP, and Greens represent a majority, and together they would have held a majority of seats."

Had the same votes been cast under a proportional voting system, Fair Vote Canada projected that the seats allocation would have been approximately as follows:

# Conservatives - 36.3% of the popular vote: 113 seats (not 124)
# Liberals - 30.1% of the popular vote: 93 seats (not 103)
# NDP - 17.5% of the popular vote: 59 seats (not 29)
# Bloc - 10.5% of the popular vote: 31 seats (not 51)
# Greens - 4.5% of the popular vote: 12 seats (not 0)

However, Smith emphasized that speculation should be tempered.

"With a different voting system, people would have voted differently," he said. "There would have been no need for strategic voting. We would likely have seen higher voter turnout. We would have had different candidates - more women, and more diversity of all kinds. We would have had more real choices."

"The voting system really matters – a lot – and the system we have is simply not acceptable in a modern democracy."

http://www.fairvotecanada.org/fvc.php/

You won't think it's funny when they come for you and no one is left standing to talk on your behalf. Keep laughing, portly.

You're just upset the liberals wanted to take your guns away. While I agree with you about gun control, I don't see the conservatives as the party which is going to prevent the erosion of our rights. Infact, I see it quite the opposite.

[quote=Coleman]obvously machette doesn't care about the education system in Canada since he plans on getting a degree in London and maybe an US university.[/quote:7bcec] ed:

Just because I may move to London and attend a university there doesn't mean I don't care for the education system. I'm wondering to what extent education had on jones vote, because he goes to a community college and I want to know what he thinks is wrong with the education system at present, the only problem I know for most young voters is tution costs...but community college tutions have a large difference than university tution fees. eek:

hahaha, just because they wanted to ban handguns?

It starts with 'x' right, then moves on to another: every single one you give them encourages this kind of action until you are left with effectively no means of getting them back, at which point you are at the complete mercy of your government. Keep laughing at me if you want, but if the Liberals or any other party wishing to go through with these kinds of actions are allowed to do so, your children's children will pay for it in the end. A balance of power is necessary, and the control of the populace (which they are only meant to serve) starts with its disarmament: history is full of examples so make me the butt of your jokes if it so pleases you... ;-)

So initially the most important issue in this election (for you) was the gun issue?

Absolutely not: it was the removal of the Liberals. The erosion of rights attempted by the aforementioned is merely a supplementary reason to kick them out. Time will tell how the new government will perform...

AHHAHA fighting over who you voted for, Canada is the new America...ENJOY COUNTING THOSE HANGING CHADS FUCKERS!!! the_finger: