Canada elects 34 copyfighters to Parliament
Michael Geist sez, "Boing Boing covered the copyright pledge during the Canadian election campaign. Following last night's election, 34 candidates that supported fair copyright are now Members of Parliament including 11 Liberals and 23 New Democrats."
While copyright reform is unlikely to emerge as a top legislative priority in the current economic environment, there is little doubt that the Conservative minority government will return to the issue (whether Jim Prentice leads that charge as Industry Minister or shifts to Foreign Affairs is a separate matter). With that in mind, having Members of Parliament who will speak out on the need for a balanced approach to copyright that preserves user rights is essential. Coming out of last night's election, 34 candidates who supported the copyright pledge during the campaign were elected - 11 Liberals and 23 New Democrats, covering 8 of 10 provinces (only NB and Saskatchewan do not have a copyright MP). In some ridings - particularly Edmonton-Strathcona where Conservative Rahim Jaffer lost to the NDP's Linda Duncan - it is certainly possible that copyright swung enough votes to help make the difference.The New Copyright MPs (Thanks, Michael!)
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Certainly something shook up Edmonton-Strathcona. It's voted PC/Reform/CPC every election since 1972, so to veer all the way to the other end of the political spectrum in one shot?
The University of Alberta is in that riding, so the theory that this was caused by concerned students who saw the NDP taking the lead in fighting C-61 passes the smell test.
Jaffer is supposed to throw a wicked party: maybe they were tired of having a frat boy as a parlimentary representative?
Writing as a resident of the riding: Although it is true that Edmonton-Strathcona has always ended up Conservative, it has long had a large leftish minority- it was represented at the provincial level by the NDP for many years and the NDP lost by only a few thousand votes in the last Federal election. So the result is is not really 'a veer' as much as a small change of balance (the NDP beat the Conservatives last night by only a few hundred votes). Although I am slightly attuned to the copyright issue, I did not hear any candidate say anything about it during the campaign. I doubt it played much of a role in the result.
That said, it is great that that Duncan is on the right side of this issue, and I am happy to be represented by her now.
I came back to Canada after eight years for THIS?!
Time to look into becoming an exchange student as quickly as possible. >:(
@Janusnode: A closer examination of the results in 2006 and 2008 leads me to believe that about half the movement was the Liberals bleeding votes and the NDP picking them up; they went from 9,391 votes to 4,288. That's actually more votes than Linda Duncan gained in getting the win.
On the other hand, there's a weird effect going on with Jaffer's votes -- down by just shy of 2,000 votes with no sign of where they went. The remaining parties in 2006 (Green, Marxist-Leninist, Marijuana, and Progressive Canadian) were flat in 2008, or didn't run at all.
What strikes me as particularly peculiar is that under normal circumstances I'd chalk this up to a difference in the candidates -- for example, the NDP might have had a more charismatic face up for election this time, so there'd be a swing.
But the candidates that took 75% of the vote between them last time and more than 80% this time? They exactly the same candidates as 2006. Something caused a re-evaluation of the relative positions of Jaffer and Duncan.
I've put in a call for other residents of Edmonton-Strathcona on the Facebook anti-C61 group, to see if there are any and if they can offer more insight.
If I'd known it was going to turn out like this, I would've voted for the Communist Party in my riding, just to make a point.
#5: The "Missing" votes probably stayed home. With a terrible turnout this year, there was an awful lot of that going on.
@Jerril: That explanation only works if you can explain why only Conservative and Liberal voters stayed home. Everyone else's vote was up or flat.
i was really really dissapointed that conservatives got so many seats....why do people vote for those clowns.....
Some things I really hate about our system...
Conservative party: 37% of the popular vote, 46% of the seats.
63% of the people vote against them, they still win.
Damnit, we need proportional representation.
RE: Boingaddict
Probably because the Liberals were touting a carbon-tax as an environmental solution and claiming it would have no impact on the tax base; and they had a leader that seemed like he'd be a good professor but not a good PM.
The NDP are ... well .. the NDP; great at the ideas for government (see Health Care, peronal tax credits for public transportation use, etc.), not so good at the running of government (see Ontario 1990-1995); and the Green party are a one issue party, and it's not the issue most voters care about.
RE: Daemon
64% of the people did not vote "against" the Conservatives, they voted "for" someone else. Even in the largest Majority gov't of the last two decades (1993 Liberals) they only received 41.24% of the popular vote while capturing 177 of 295 seats (60% of the seats). Besides, even if you were to move to a proportial representation system the Conservatives would have still formed the current gov't, although with a lesser minority.
Finally, the problem with proportional representation in a country our size is it unfairly puts the Federal control of the country in the most populous province (Ontario), which leads to economic policies that don't take into account the needs of the vastly different economic circimstances of the individual provinces (re: the Praries, the Maritimes). Which makes the confederation of those provinces unbeneficial to them, it's built this way to ensure that those provinces have a shot at influencing the Federal gov't. It's not a perfect system, but proportional representation is not the solution for the existing one's imperfections, (unless all you care about is Copyright law, then it's just dandy).
Be that as it may, the Canadian-DMCA is going to keep coming until it passes; the Liberals are going to take a hard right shift in their next leader (I'm betting on Manley right now), and they'll probably pass it in 2009 (along with the Conservatives). Those opposed need to remain vigilant to that opposition, or seek a compromise on what's being asked.
It shows that the public, when informed about the issue, are on our side. Which is predictable, because we want to protect people's freedoms and the MAFIAA want to destroy them.
I think that these issues will get more and more in the public eye (particularly if the 3-strikes thing ever goes ahead in a big way) and we'll be able to use the democratic system to get what we want.
As the boss of WIPO recently said "The discussion is not an easy one. In each country, there are many more consumers than creators and performers, making the political management of the discussion uncomfortable. [...] it may be more appropriate to conduct the discussion at the international, rather than the national level."
In other words, WIPO and the content corporations know that the will of the people is against them, so they want to bypass democracy and impose their new restrictions on everyone's freedom through international treaties.
@ #10
That's what happens when you have 1 united conservative party and 4 scattered left wing parties. Think about it, if the Liberals, the NDP, and the Bloc joined up and formed a new party then they would currently have (76+37+50) = 163 seats. That would not only be more than the conservatives, but it would be a majority government. they could pretty much pass whatever they wanted and the conservatives would have to sit in their corner and pout for another 4 years.
Well, given that I hit the ground in Canada in just over a week, that's good to hear.
Did no conservatives take that pledge?
illegal election?
http://www.dwatch.ca/camp/RelsOct1508.html
@13 Yes, but then we'd have a two party system. I'll take a Conservative minority over a two party system any day.
@1 Being a grad student at the U of A, I can safely say that Linda Duncan went well out of her way campaigning to students at the University. Every day on my way to my office I passed at least one table full of volunteers recruiting new voters. By contrast, in my riding (just north of the river in Edmonton Centre) I hardly saw a sign of the Liberals or the NDP and, no doubt consequently, Laurie Hawn (with whom I've spoken several times about C-61) won with 49% of the vote. Clearly Linda Duncan earned her victory.