Justin Trudeau – Profile of an interesting man
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http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-electoral-reform-whe...
eta: not going to reply to every comment, so: yes, he is better than Trump; no, CBC is not smearing him.
I was also disillusioned by his back-down on electoral reform. That reform is a fundamentally important change for Canadian democracy. It's an incredibly hard change to make, and I don't fault him for not succeeding yet, but he needs to keep on it. If he is, that's not being communicated well.
All that said, he's still a phenomenal leader. He acts on values he identifies as being truly Canadian more often than just "playing politics". His decisions aren't always popular, but he can always defend them with clarity. We just don't see that enough in global politics.
He's well liked by some, and hated by others, at home in Canada. But popularity does not make a great leader. It would appear Erdogan is loved by many in Turkey, does that make him someone you'd want to lead your country?
There will also always be those who don't share Trudeau's fundamental values - as would be true of any leader. They will never like Trudeau or agree with his choices or the reasoning for them as they simply have different goals. I think that's where democracy plays in. We vote for the party, and the leader, that represent not just our interests, but our values. The majority win and establish the values of the country.
The problem with most nations is the elected leaders no longer represent any coherent values or stick to them in a reliable way which results in elections and leaders being entirely interest-driven.
[1] http://www.cbc.ca/news2/interactives/leadermeter/index.html
[2] https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/
Despite his unpopularity Harper still received 32% of the vote. So I think that can be considered the floor for right wing party support in Canada. It's highly likely that Scheer will receive > 32% of the vote. He probably won't receive more than ~40% of the vote, but whatever he gets, it'll probably be enough to win given 3 party first past the post. (4 parties including the Bloc).
So then the Liberals, NDP & Bloc will split the remaining 60 - 65%. Under first past the post, those votes get split and the Tories take a bunch of those seats. If Trudeau had gotten his desired reform of ranked ballots then most of that would probably accrue to the Liberals and his majority would continue until he made a serious misstep.
But instead if the reform was to mixed member proportional as it appears most vote reformers want then alternative parties would get more of those seats. So the Liberal majority would be unlikely to repeat. However his chances of being able to lead a minority government in that situation seem fairly good.
So even though MMP benefits the NDP & Greens much more than it benefits the Liberals Trudeau should have thrown his weight behind it. I hope he enjoys his position on the opposition benches come 2020 and I hope Scheer is a competent leader because he's going to be our next Prime Minister.
Personally I think he's doing a fine job and from what I can tell he is still well liked in Canada.
The second referendum didn't pass, with only 40% saying 'Yes' to STV—however in both referendums the electorate were incredibly uninformed and both our major political parties did a poor job of supporting it; it's never in the interest of a party that could form a majority government (in FPTP rules) to enact electoral reform that could result in them not having a majority if they 'won'.
Really? There was a ton of material about it sent to everyone. What is your bar for really informed? Now imagine that on a national level.
The No campaign ran a mass-media (television) focused campaign that concentrated on airtime in the last two weeks (there was evidence to show, that 6 weeks before the referendum, very few people were even aware it was happening).
The 'No' television pieces told the electorate it was 'complicated' and there's no point in fixing something that's not broken. Most people didn't know anything about what was happening behind the scenes, just that television was telling them it would be more complicated and wasn't worth it. Most people left it at that and didn't look for the other side—the 'Yes' informative pieces were not in the same format, not in easily digestible televised promos. That is what I call uninformed. There was very little for the mass-consumer that was easily accessible. It doesn't help that the STV proposed was complicated, but no accessible advertising by the 'Yes' campaign was available to quell those fears.
Just because everyone got it in the mail, doesn't mean it was accessible. It was a complete failure of the 'Yes' campaign to realize who their audience really were. Those who were interested enough to read their materials probably were already willing to support the cause. Those who were not interested enough just listened to what the television was telling them: Vote No, Fear Change.
Re: informing on a national level
I do not believe a referendum is required to enact electoral reform. We have enough intelligent people that the best choice—or at the very least a better choice—can be made without forcing the electorate to make the choice between systems themselves. I do not trust the majority to support a minority, our societies continually fail at that. No one ever said we cannot change an electoral system again, in fact, in BC we've already done that in the distant past.
Also, I posted this not as a Harper Vs. Trump thing, but to see how each country is dealing with multiculturalism.
The candidate they did pick, Andrew Scheer, is more like Stephen Harper than otherwise. He might (and in some ways is) try to pull a few pages from Trump's play book, but at least it's not the entire thing.
I learned my lesson when rob ford was elected. The man isn't much of a statesman but he can campaign with the best of them. While everyone was laughing at him, I worried over Scottish independence, brexit, and of course Donald trump.