- Joined
- Jan 27, 2013
- Messages
- 28,822
- Reaction score
- 20,495
- Location
- Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- Gender
- Male
- Political Leaning
- Conservative
Sounds rational. What does Canadian politics look like compared to the U.S.? It's not uncommon to envision a reasonable government solution, it's just that neither of our incredible diverse TWO parties are so tragically absurd it rarely ever plays out reasonably.
Canada has a multi-party system, currently with a majority Conservative government but not in the American conservative tradition - we don't spend a lot of time legislating for or against individual morality.
For conservatives in America, our Conservative Party would be moderate - our Liberal Party would be like the Democrats - our NDP would be further toward socialism on the left - our Green Party would be similar to that in America - and our wild-card are the various Sovereigntist parties from Quebec that just like to suck off the Canadian teat and wreak havoc whenever there's a minority government.
Generally, on the big issues, there's a fair bit of consensus, although budgets are tough when it's a minority government and the government needs to get votes from the opposition.
As far as health care is concerned, no party wants to see it weakened although Conservatives do want to see more private services open up and be offered to those who choose not to go through the waiting lines for government sponsored care, especially since a lot of Canadians have supplemental insurance to help defray costs. I've said in the past that if Americans wanted to choose a Canadian style program it could be done without the uproar caused by Obamacare and leave it to individuals to get supplemental care through work or on their own - you could have had the best of both worlds.