I think a majority of Canadians are kind, hardworking, and want what’s best for their families, friends, neighbours, and the country.
What does a brand new political party platform look like to appeal to an overwhelming majority of Canadians?
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Electoral reform, at all levels. Start with municipal governments by offering tax dollars to help with the transition and to educate citizens. Once a municipality has successfully held their first election under the new system, they get some more money to continue their education plans, then move up to provincial, federal, etc.
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Boost healthcare. The state of all healthcare systems is shameful. Bonus transfer payments for strengthening the healthcare system with higher wages and benefits, lower wait times, more equal access to care, and fewer people without family doctors.
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Get serious on the environment. Nothing else matters once you can’t drink the water and breathe the air. Stop subsidizing carbon, collect carbon taxes, and direct the collected money back to individuals. Big rebates for energy efficiency projects, electric cars & charging.
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Kickstart housing. It’s not rocket surgery that cities and suburbs need higher density housing, with accessible public transit nearby.
That’s just off the top of my head…
The NDP already represent a lot of what the majority of Canadians want, but fearmongering about sOciALiSm, and the party having to move more towards the center to try and meet the Liberals halfway has diluted their brand.
The people who would never vote for them anyways think that they’re too far left, and the people who used to support them see them as too-eager-to-please to the current Liberal government.
If you could magically snap away people’s preconcieved notions and team mentality towards politics, and had them read party policies carte blanche, I think a large portion of Canadians would go NDP, especially if they went back to their traditional policies and mindset.
If you could magically snap away people’s preconcieved notions and team mentality towards politics, and had them read party policies carte blanche, I think a large portion of Canadians would go NDP, especially if they went back to their traditional policies and mindset.
You could say the same about any of the parties. Their platforms all sound great, it’s the implementation and actual outcomes that differ.
The People’s Party (I know, kinda cheating) Platform is pretty easy to tell which party it is. It’s pro conversion therapy(shock treatments, “pray the gay away” camps/prisons), including on children, and anti-trans. It even name-drops Jordan Peterson.
- Remove the ban imposed by Bill C-4, the so-called “conversion therapy bill”
- Repeal Bill C-16, the bill that added gender self-identification as ground for protection against discrimination.
That’s pretty easy to spot and avoid.
The cons say that they don’t believe that Canada should have a carbon tax, or a carbon cap as a national policy as #31 of their Policy Declaration.
That’s also pretty easy to avoid.
I could see someone looking the NDP and LIb platforms and not being able to tell which is which, though they could pretty easily figure out that they are not right-wing.
What does a brand new political party platform look like to appeal to an overwhelming majority of Canadians?
Empty set. The overwhelming majority of Canadians (and voters in general around the world) don’t follow policy that closely, which is why spin, kissing babies and brand loyalty is such a huge part of politics.
Then what’s the spin you want to hear from a politician that would make you vote for them? (That is, spin that isn’t full of racism and rhetoric about the other side.)
So, spin is rephrasing something so it seems more palatable when you don’t have the full context, but if you’re asking for my personal policy wishlist I can certainly give you that!
Basic income would be great, and should probably be about where minimum wage is now. At the other end, a hard wealth cap at 10 million or something is overdue. If you’re a skilled professional and you save heavily you can absolutely save up a few million before you retire, but nobody makes it to 8 digits without being some sort of bigshot, and at that point it becomes self-perpetuating. Not making it gradual should prevent most flight of capital.
I recently learned Norway has a party list electoral system like several other countries, but uniquely doesn’t allow snap elections. If the government loses confidence, they just form a new coalition from the existing parliament. That sounds like it would avoid a lot of the problems we have in both FPTP and proportional systems.
Those are the big two, but there’s other less fundamental issues I have opinions about. We should keep legalising drugs, because they were largely banned for stupid reasons in the first place. Most forms of zoning should probably be thrown out too, because if anything the cities they’ve produced are even more soulless, now with a side of being impractical. I’m glad we have a carbon tax, and I think we should keep raising it.
Edit: Publicly funded elections are up there, too. We don’t have a terrible situation right now in Canada, what with strong donation limits, but it just makes sense to go all the way and leave no ambiguity that could cause problems down the line.
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Legalized drug possession, criminalize selling without permits and authorization.
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Electoral Reform, I don’t know which but anything is better than we have
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Healthcare which includes dental and eyes, pharmacare, mental health care
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Higher corporate tax rates
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Higher taxes on the ultra wealthy
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Higher property taxes for those who own more than 2 properties
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Lower taxes for Low to Middle income
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Increase universities that have medical and nursing programs.
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Allow scary looking guns, increase border security to prevent illegal guns from entering the country in the first place.
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Increase defense spending to meet NATO standards, invest in self sustainability and being able to build and repair our navy.
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a bunch of other shit I can’t think of right now
Allow scary looking guns but require the gun and anything that goes onto or into it, anything that it attaches to and anything that attaches to it to be hot pink. Possession of anything that should be hot pink but isn’t automatically loose the privilege of owning guns for life. Allow a gun or anything that should be hot pink but isn’t into your range lose your licence forever. Sell a gun or anything else that should be hot pink loose your license forever.
Being hot pink does not in any way diminish the function of the gun. I’m perfectly happy to shoot with a hot pink gun. If you object then the only reason you want the gun is for how it looks and how it makes you feel. Those are bad reasons to own a gun in Canada.
A labor or workers’ party that unifies anyone who works for a living, whether as an employee or a small business owner. The platform should focus on shifting the balance of power from capital to labor via clearly social democratic policies with strong emphasis on workers rights and reunionization. This party should go out of its way to advertise and educate the public on why and how these policies benefit the majority. Lon-term future policies might revolve around reforming corporate ownership structures or promoting alternative worker ownership structures, among other things.
Seconding a labour party. Focus on affordability for the common person. Make the process to set up employee owned businesses easy, cater to business of all sizes regardless of how much lobbying/influence money provided. Give unions better negotiating tools. Promote democratic reform so individuals can feel more active in giving input to civic reforms (when was our last referendum?), and not just for the well-connected and wealthy. This is different than a policy by Twitter-poll (what populists like Premier Doug Ford tend to do) but a visionary party to reinforce the notion that the government is us. Not a team sport to be played.
