Canadian Liberals win landslide majority in election, unseat Conservative government

foxnews.com ^ | October 20, 2015 | Fox News

[Berlin_Freeper]

Canada's Liberal Party, led by the son of the country's most famous political figure in the second half of the 20th century, ended the nine-year Conservative premiership of Stephen Harper with a landslide victory in Monday's federal election.

According to a tally by the Canadian Press, the Liberals passed the 170-seat threshold needed to gain control of parliament at 12:15 a.m. ET Tuesday. In all, the Liberals won 184 seats. The Conservatives were a distant second with 99 seats, while the left-wing New Democratic Party placed third with 44 seats.

The results mean that Justin Trudeau, 43, a former schoolteacher and son of the late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, will become the second-youngest leader in Canada's history. Trudeau's Liberals had been favored to win the most seats, but few expected a majority and fewer foresaw the final margin of victory.

"We beat fear with hope," Trudeau said in his victory speech to supporters in Montreal early Tuesday. "We beat cynicism with hard work. We beat negative, divisive politics with a positive vision that brings Canadians together. Most of all we defeated the idea that Canadians should be satisfied with less."

[Sam Gamgee]

Heart over head. I guess they don't know seeing a counsellor for anxiety that speaks sweetly in your ear is not much of a help when the city is on fire.

[Sam Gamgee]

How can we know that for sure? You can’t know the gender of the voters.

[Sam Gamgee]

I would agree. I’d say 15% make up hard core fiscal and social conservatives. The other 17% of the vote are either one or the other, or simply just centrists.

[Sam Gamgee]

If translated to the US system, the President would be Democrat for life.

[Sam Gamgee]

Soldiers are for peace keeping. That is what it will return to.

You sound like an expert. From what I understood in 2006 is that Canada needed 10% year over year budget increases for at least a decade to get our military forces up to par.

Harper did some of that but not near enough.

[dfwgator]

Soldiers are for killing people and breaking their things.

[Sam Gamgee]

Yes, but only about 3 in 10 voters understand that.

[mkjessup]

Soldiers are for peace keeping. That is what it will return to.

More than likely, however I will qualify that by saying that the typical Canadian soldier has as much fighting spirit, as much heart as any one of our troops, they train hard, they are dedicated men and women and I hold them in great respect.

You sound like an expert.

Nah, I'm no expert, I just study this kind of stuff when I have time, I've always been fascinated with military forces, I recall learning in junior high school that the U.S. nuclear deterrent was comprised of 1000 Minuteman missiles, 54 Titan II missiles, 656 Polaris (or Poseidon) submarine launched missiles, and at that time, approximately 400+ B-52 bombers (along with a few Convair B-58s). They burned those numbers into my head, not that I'm sure how useful the data would be, lol

From what I understood in 2006 is that Canada needed 10% year over year budget increases for at least a decade to get our military forces up to par.

That sounds about right to me. The trouble with any Western society (especially Canada) is having to make the repeated choice of 'guns vs butter' and it is clear that 'butter' has always been the priority mainly due to the overwhelming military resources of the U.S. which provides Canada with a very effective security blanket.

Harper did some of that but not near enough.

It can't all be blamed on Harper although the past 10 years certainly can, his predecessors (Martin and Chretien) did little to nothing to improve Canada's military preparedness either.

[Sam Gamgee]

I agree about the soldiers. They deserve our love and respect. I remember watching some program on TV of Canadian soldiers at checkpoints. The stress of that situation, not knowing if the next truck rolling up is full of martyrs or not.

I recall those comparisons in the 1980s between the US and USSR conventional sources. I have tried to find that data again on the internet to no avail. I recall the Soviets having twice the number of aircraft, three times the tank divisions, and maybe twice the number of foot soldiers. They had less nukes but much larger ones that could take out half the state of ohio.

[mkjessup]

You are absolutely correct on Soviet throw weight when it came to nuclear warheads, it was my understanding that they had to go for maximum megatons possible due to the lack of pinpoint accuracy of their ICBMs, I grew up outside Washington D.C. (Peoples Republic of Maryland lol) and when they began construction of the circumferential I-495 Beltway, the local joke was that they were trying to at least be fair to the Soviets by putting a big bulls eye around D.C. so if we ever started lobbing missiles at each other, that Moscow might have a fighting chance (a bit of macabre humor lol).

I have family who had the opportunity to see Canada's one and only modern aircraft carrier, HMCS Bonaventure, back in the day, a fine ship: