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Federal Election 2004 - Page 2© David Newman
Page 2
May 27, 2004
Harper's Conservatives are advocating something akin to the Common Sense revolution with talk of tax-cuts, government inefficiency mixed with democratic reform for the senate, and more free-votes, and referenda on moral issues. The Party has done less well then expected as their popularity is down compared to the combined PC-CA vote of 2000, especially in British Columbia.
Paul Martin's liberal let go high popularity when the sponsorship scandal rocked Canada. While the Liberals' popularity has slowly gone up preceding the election, the numbers are still down, especially in Quebec where the Bloc seems ready to win as much as 50 seats, perhaps even more, depending on how the vote is concentrated. The Liberals are proclaiming themselves the saviours of single-payer universal health Care and calling the Conservative tax-breaks irresponsible. Despite "Toronto" leader Jack Layton, the NDP seems to do well in Western Canada. Not as well as the Conservatives but they seem to be getting back their protest vote status there. The NDP has released its numbers and are promising more for Health and for a Green Economy. They however wont be winning the upper-income vote or corporate vote anytime soon, because they are proposing an inheritance tax on estates of over one million dollars and are rolling back corporate taxes. This has Minority government written all over it. And while these governments are unstable a la Joe Clark, they have the potential to create a more consensual form of government and keep the government in check from corruption and lies. One of Canada's greatest Prime Ministers, Leaster Pearson (1963-1968), had never had a majority government, using the support of Social Credit and the NDP to help him out. We'll see what happens on June 28th.
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In response to message posted by Red:
I have also voted in the advance polls because I'm working for a political party as a scr ...
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Dave,This is the first time in my life that I've been so confused and undecided of how I'm going to vote. I've been voting for a good number of years and this election there seems to be no one to ...
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