Posted on 01/24/2006 9:25:12 PM PST by Heartofsong83
Voters in 3 major cities shut out Conservatives Updated Tue. Jan. 24 2006 5:46 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
With Stephen Harper prepared to become Canada's next prime minister, the political sun is assuredly rising in the West.
"The West has wanted in; The West is in now," said the prime minister-designate in his victory speech after being awarded a slim minority Conservative government on Monday night.
But Harper failed to win over any voters in the major urban centres of Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, which has city officials concerned they will have no voice to address their concerns at the federal table.
Toronto Mayor David Miller, who actively campaigned for both NDP and Liberal candidates in the election campaign, contends this new government will have to reach out to the cities.
"It's very clear the people in cities, in the major cities -- in Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal -- voted for parties that in the last parliament, had delivered programs for the people that live in cities," Miller told CTV.
"I think by Torontonians and people in Vancouver and Montreal voting for their cities, it sends a strong message that cities needs need to be addressed if you're going to succeed electorally in the city.
In the city of Toronto, the Conservatives were shut out completely once again, as the Liberals took 51 per cent of the popular vote and 20 of 23 seats, while the NDP took 20.5 per cent and won the other three seats.
As for the Conservatives, they had nearly 24 per cent of the popular vote.
Beyond the city limits, in the Greater Toronto Area, the Liberals maintained their hold with 45.2 per cent of the popular vote and 16 of 23 possible seats.
However, there was also significant Tory support, at 37.3 per cent and seven possible seats.
The electorate in Vancouver showed a similar kind of division.
In the city of Vancouver proper, the Liberals took 42.2 per cent of the popular vote and five of six ridings at stake, while the NDP took 26.9 per cent of the vote, and one seat.
Though the Conservatives did not win any ridings, they took 24.9 per cent of the vote in that city.
Meanwhile, voters in Montreal were polarized between the pro-sovereignty Bloc Quebecois and the Liberals, with 12 seats and about 35 per cent popular support for each party.
Montreal Mayor Gerald Tremblay told CTV News he will reach out to the new MPs to ensure his city does not lose its influence.
"We've worked very hard, not only the mayors of the big cities, but all communities, to improve the wellbeing of our citizens," Tremblay said.
"The partnership that we have with the federal government has been instrumental in helping us do that, but most of all to help us improve the competitiveness of our cities, and thus the prosperity of Quebec and of Canada," he said.
"I think that every prime minister of Canada has the same interest ... so in that sense we will continue to work very hard with the new government and explain to them why it's important to continue to help the cities," he said.
Preston Manning, the former leader of the Reform Party, weighed in on CTV's Mike Duffy Live however, pointing out that the Tories performed well in two key western cities.
"People should remember they captured all the seats in two of the most dynamic cities in the country, Calgary and Edmonton, so I don't think they're doing too bad at all," Manning said.
Maybe the cities need to reach out to the government.
The average Ontarians in big cities and most of their suburbs literally loathe Conservatives, let alone small c conservatives. I saw this from an apolitical sports forum hosted by Canadians:
Cities breed government dependance and idiocy. It is the stone cold truth.
You are correct. The 6th, 7th and 8th largest cities (Ottawa, Winnipeg and Quebec City) also embraced conservative values. The 9th largest city (Hamilton) dumped all their Liberals and are now an NDP-Conservative split.
Other trouble spots among large cities remain Halifax, London, Windsor, Kitchener-Waterloo and Victoria.
Even if you meet the wealthy (upper middle class to multimillionaires) in these cities, the chance is they are infected with ideological leftism.
Uh-oh.
We didn't vote for you, support you, or like you but if you don't reach out to us there will be hell to pay.
Liberal mantra
Quebec has struck me as a better-organized city than Montreal. Heck, I suppose the separatists are marginally better than federalist Francophones!
The Conservatives were only 30 votes short of a majority.
Assuming all their current seats held, next time that gap could easily be made up in Ontario (+20), Quebec (+5) and the Maritimes (+5) - easily - all without gaining a single big-city seat.
All the Conservatives have to do is provide clean, decent, sensible governing that appeals to the suburban and rural middle class. The urban bleeding-hearts can shove it.
That is definitely correct. Almost all of the very wealthy ridings (outside Alberta) voted Liberal. Conservative support was strongest in lower to middle-class rural ridings.
Canada's wealthiest riding, West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country, was a Liberal PICKUP from the Conservatives!
Not only that, we have a lot of room to grow there now! Just a year ago, we didn't even have stakes laid in Quebec!
Franco-Ontarians also embraced the Conservative agenda - the three most Francophone ridings all went Conservative, and all to a strong pro-life, pro-family MP.
Blue Ridings and Red Ridings. There's a joke in there somewhere.
Ironically here in New Zealand I live in the wealthiest electorate in the whole country - Epsom. Epsom is called a blue ribbon seat because any conservative candidate is a shoe-in. In the September 2005 election, we have a free market very conservative candidate Rodney Hide defeating a mainstream conservative candidate Richard Worth. The two candidates combined get 70% of votes in this electorate while Labour (equivalent to your Liberal) got 12%!
I'd say +10 in Ontario and +15 in Quebec, plus a few isolated gains in the Prairies (still room to grow there) and Atlantic Canada, are more realistic.
The owner of the Toronto Blue Jays was on CBC last night and was saying crap like "yeah we all knew this was gonna happen but the liberals were not shut out like everyone expected...we are still strong", they don't hide it up there. I can't imagine U.S. team owners putting their politics out there like that.
After all, the former liberal government took such great pains to reach out to the Conservative parts of Canada--so the principle of reciprocity requires that a Conservative government be equally magnanimous.
Equally.
That's strange - but if it comes down to morals, that will be reversed. Urban rich people here tend to be fiscally moderate or conservative but VERY socially liberal.
Canadian version of DU = Rabble (www.rabble.ca). Supported by Marxist unions though.
Just like here in the US, the parasite nests vote liberal. No surprise.
It was exactly what I expected. Urban Montreal has 28 seats, Urban Toronto has 38 seats and Urban Vancouver has 13 seats. We have NONE of those 79 seats.
I would say that that odds that the millionaires are infected with liberalism is higher than the odds that the middle class is. For whatever reason, rich citydwellers take on this holier-than-thou attitude and loathe anything that resembles conservativism, particularly social conservatism.
Having been at parties with these people where they all just assume everyone agrees with them, well, it's kind of amusing to drop facts that don't fit into their paradigm of thinking.
Cities tend to be liberal because they are places you can't eaily survive without government. It seems to me that most cities have their own slave political populations which are fostered like the disease on Baron Harknonnen's face in Dune. These people are trapped into perpetual dependence and tend to think only in terms of what is given to them which makes them the perfect mark for political aims.
It will be interesting to see the long term effect of the depopulation of New Orleans on the well being of the evacuees. I wager that the people who were forced to move out of desperation will be much better off than the same class groups in similiar cities. I've thought for sometime that cities as living environments are horrid and I would wager that many factors lead to cities voting the way they do that are physiological, not to exclude contamination of the populace with greater concentrations of heavy metals and pollutants which is a well known fact.
I've began to think that liberalism may indeed be a "disease" brought on by chronic pollution with lead and other chemicals and that through successful pollution control efforts of the past few decades the left has actually been helping doom their very existence as a political "subspecies".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1048325.stm
http://www.harvardmagazine.com/on-line/050543.html
"Long-term health effects can include chronic respiratory disease, lung cancer, heart disease, and even damage to the brain, nerves, liver, or kidneys."
http://www.lbl.gov/Education/ELSI/Frames/pollution-health-effects-f.html
http://www.consumerhealthreviews.com/articles/GeneralHealth/PollutionEffects.htm
"The really devastating problem is the functional effects - systems (in the body) don't function properly, so they don't function properly," she said in an interview. The most dramatic sign of trouble is that some male birds, animals and humans - exposed to toxic chemicals in the egg or womb have much lower sperm counts than normal adults. Male also develop some female characteristics and females often become less feminine, Colborn said."
The wealth of Canada lies in the Red (Conservative) areas of Canada while the eaters live in the blue welfare zones.
***Yeah, those latte-sipping liberals that know nothing about middle Canada...***
Sounds to me like they are sucking at the government tit instead.
Anyone know about the fertility rate of Canadians in Conservative areas vs. the fertility rate of Canadians in Liberal areas?
(Not that government education doesn't tend to negate the impact of a relatively higher Conservative fertility rate, but I'm still interested to know.)
One thing I can tell you is that our great government brings in at least 200 000 immigrants from the 3rd world every year and at least 90% of them vote liberal. Also, these 3rd worlders tend to have a ton of kids. Talked to one today who has 7 children already. The future looks bleak for Canada.
It actually is a bit of a problem that there are now cities, both in the US and Canada, where normal people are virtually absent and the political concerns of normals are the object of derision or worse.
This was not always the case.
Politically, it is alarming that the minority leader in the House comes from a district where Ralph Nader got more votes than George Bush.
It is as if Denny Hastert or Tom DeLay came from districts where David Duke or Pat Buchanan outpolled John Kerry.
It is going to take a while for the liberals in the cities to realize they don't matter as much as they think they do in elections. Forever in the US the cities dictated political outcomes. Then everyone else got organized...
You're right. The rural parts of Ontario and British Columbia, minus the First Nations-dominated northern parts, are mostly blue (red in American standards). Even much of Ottawa went conservative!
Quebec was always a conservative wasteland, so to get a foothold there is HUGE.
I was in Calgary and could not stop thinking how much it was like Denver, without the weird liberals. Calgary is also growing at an enormous rate.
It's possible.
Also we did EXTREMELY well among Franco-Ontarians...the three most Francophone ridings in Ontario are all Conservative. The next three all saw our vote increase.
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