this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025

75 points (87.9% liked)

Canada

9568 readers

1107 users here now

What's going on Canada?

Related Communities

🍁 Meta

🗺️ Provinces / Territories

🏙️ Cities / Local Communities

Sorted alphabetically by city name.

🏒 Sports

Hockey

Football (NFL): incomplete

Football (CFL): incomplete

Baseball

Toronto Blue Jays

Basketball

Toronto Raptors

Soccer

Main: /c/CanadaSoccer
Toronto FC

💻 Schools / Universities

Sorted by province, then by total full-time enrolment.

💵 Finance, Shopping, Sales

🗣️ Politics

General:
- Canada Politics
- FairVote Canada
Federal Parties (alphabetical):
- Animal Protection Party of Canada
- NDP
By Province (alphabetical):
- BC Greens

🍁 Social / Culture

Rules

Keep the original title when submitting an article. You can put your own commentary in the body of the post or in the comment section.

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage: lemmy.ca

founded 4 years ago

MODERATORS

otter@lemmy.ca

mp3@lemmy.ca

otters_raft@lemmy.ca

Trade Offer (lemmy.ca)

submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by snoons@lemmy.ca to c/canada@lemmy.ca

20 comments fedilink hide all child comments

*really opened up a can of worms with this one haha

all 22 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 25 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

You receive:

A fascist government
Loss of sovereignty

'Cause the Greens aren't going to win, but they will make it easier for the Conservatives to win.

[+] BinzyBoi@lemmy.ca -20 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Hey guys! Look! A Lemmy.World user!

Point and laugh!

But seriously what the hell is with this mindset always seeming to come from .world?

[–] u_vexii@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Is anything they said false? Does this comment help anything? Do you feel better for having made it?

[–] BinzyBoi@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

So you also think not voting Liberal leads to fascism? I love when parties are entitled to my vote, that's definitely how democracy works.

My comment here summarises things.

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 8 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Voting in a way that leads to the Conservatives getting a majority government leads to fascism. Due to the combination of a party system and first past the post voting, unless you can convince Liberal and NDP voters to all vote Green, voting for them likely means that the party competing against the Conservatives in your riding won’t get your vote, which means the vote has virtually no impact.

That does depend on your riding though; in ridings where there’s no chance of Conservatives winning, sure, vote Green.

And then there’s ridings like mine where the Conservatives are almost guaranteed to win and Greens aren’t even running a candidate. I’d run myself, but at this point I’d rather take the slim chance that the Liberals can finally unseat the Conservative candidate who’s been our MP for over a decade.

Greens have a great platform. And that means that everyone with money and power is going to do all they can to keep them from winning seats.

[+] BinzyBoi@lemmy.ca -7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Ah, so you didn't even read the comment. Congrats. Go ahead and "strategic vote" and have fun making this country ever so slightly more like the U.S. by forcing smaller parties to dissolve creating a two-party system.

Layton would be rolling in his grave seeing the lack of fight people have for their values these days.

[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Actually, I was disagreeing with it in a thoughtful manner instead of just discounting you or your argument altogether.

I used to vote by your logic. Then I changed strategy when I saw how the system was set up to favour bad and worse.

So now I locally push for proportional representation and encourage people to support the Green party, while also voting “strategically” where that term means voting for the least bad candidate who has a chance of winning at the Federal level.

At the municipal and provincial level? I vote Green or whatever the nearest option is.

[–] BinzyBoi@lemmy.ca -4 points 2 weeks ago

Made a wrong assumption then, not that it means anything, but downvoting myself to make up for jumping to conclusions.

What I think is that the Greens and NDP are highly disappointing, and as much as they overall don't align with my values, I'll likely be voting Canadian Future since I refuse to vote NDP unless Jagmeet steps down and they get their leadership act together. I would have voted for the Greens if they ran a candidate in my riding like they said they would on their site, but come April 9th when the entries list was finalised, they were nowhere to be seen. Even then it was only because I've been impressed with Pedneault to the point that it makes up for May still being party head.

I just feel that we could in such a different position where people didn't have this conception of there being a need to strategic vote if these two parties actually fought like they should be. The NDP being this low after achieving Dentalcare for Canadians is beyond pathetic. Jagmeet says it in his speeches, but it should be all over the place with their advertising talking about how they strong-armed the Liberals into passing it.

[–] BinzyBoi@lemmy.ca 9 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I mean, if they bothered to run a candidate in my riding...

Quite literally unbelievable. They say on their site they have a candidate for my riding, I reach out and email the given contact on their site offering to volunteer, I get zero response, and then find out Canada's Future can run a candidate here, but not them. Borderline pathetic.

[–] sbv@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 weeks ago

It's typically a question of who is available in the riding to run. And then they need to make it through the vetting process. And then they need to collect the signatures and deposit. And then they need to fill out the paperwork and submit it to Elections Canada.

It's a lot of effort, just to be a name on a ballot.

[–] Sturgist@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 weeks ago

They're running a candidate in mine....but I'm not sure that's actually better. Guy has no experience, which isn't necessarily horrible...gotta start somewhere. He has no internet presence other than his green party page. His green party page is only accessable by web search, it's not linked to anywhere on the green party page. There's almost no blurb on his page. One line saying that he grew up in Vancouver, and then a paragraph of literally just the party standard line....my riding isn't in Vancouver.... it's close by, but a different city.

[–] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 weeks ago

Sign me the heck up!

[+] Claymore@lemm.ee 4 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] Arkouda@lemmy.ca 9 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Can you imagine how many votes a party could get if every single person who said "I don't want to burn my vote" voted how they wanted instead of being convinced to vote "strategically"?

[–] Zorque@lemmy.world 12 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Can you imagine how wonderful the world would be if the world worked how we hoped it did instead of how it actually did?

[–] BinzyBoi@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

You do realize that giving your vote away from a smaller party to a larger one leads us more into the two-party lockup that the U.S. faces right?

Always there's this one-sided thinking of "oh, but if you vote this way, then it's your fault when the party most opposed to you wins. Why do we never ask why the party that's most positioned to beat the party we're most in objection to isn't out there trying to appeal to us? Why must we appeal to them?

By deciding that your vote is a waste when it goes to a smaller party, then congrats! Your "strategic voting" dissolves support for the smaller parties which in turn leads to their eventual dissolution, and then voila, you end up like the states where the larger left-wing party ends up losing support amongst it's own base in pleas to appeal to Conservatives driving the overton window to the right.

EDIT: Quickly adding to this comment that if the Liberal candidate for my riding doesn't explicitly come out in support for proportional representation, I will be throwing my vote elsewhere. Sent an email, and keeping an eye on public events.

[–] Arkouda@lemmy.ca 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Is there any party that is running with Electoral Reform as a main part of their platform right now?

[–] BinzyBoi@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Greens, NDP, Canadian Future. All running with proportional representation in their platforms.

[–] Arkouda@lemmy.ca -3 points 2 weeks ago

Please explain, how does the world actually work?

I have some free time while deep diving my riding's Liberal Candidate so don't feel rushed to respond.

[–] Claymore@lemm.ee -1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

sorry

edit: As a compromise, I'll go support our local proportional representation movement, and the points provided are adequate that I'll vote green.

I hate first past the post, because I wish I didn't have to grapple with dilemma this in the first place.

[–] Arkouda@lemmy.ca -4 points 2 weeks ago

Your behavior is very strange.