Surprise! Canadians Do Want the Opposition to Cooperate!

The poll I helped pay for has been released.

And guess what? All those pundits saying Canadians don't want cooperation among the Fucking Useless Opposition® are wrong.

Canadians support electoral reform, would vote for cooperation candidates – new national poll

April 4 – Toronto –  A new national Environics poll shows that Canadians think our democratic system is broken, overwhelmingly favour proportional representation, and are willing vote for cooperation candidates to defeat Conservative MPs in the next federal election.

The telephone poll, which sampled 1,004 voters, comes just days before voting in the Liberal leadership race is set to begin. Cooperation and electoral reform have been major topics of debate between the two top candidates, Joyce Murray and Justin Trudeau.

Poll Findings
1. Canadians more likely to say our democratic system is broken than effective. When asked if our democratic system is broken and needed to be fixed, or effective and works well – 45% said broken and 33% said it works well.

2. Seven in ten Canadians support move to proportional representation. When asked if they would support a move to proportional representation – 70% of Canadians would support, with Liberal supporters at 77%, NDP supporters at 82%, Green supporters at 93%, and Conservative supporters at 62%.

3. Canadians would vote for cooperation candidates to defeat Conservative MPs.When asked if they would vote for a candidate that was jointly fielded by the Liberals/NDP/Greens to defeat a Conservative – 37% would vote for the joint candidate, 25% would vote for the Conservative candidate, 18% are undecided and 18% would not vote (this number is comparable to the number of people in this poll who said they did not vote in the last election.) Notably, over 70% of Liberal and NDP supporters would vote for the joint candidate while less than 7% would vote Conservative.

4. Disenfranchised Canadians would be more likely to vote. People who did not vote in 2011 were asked if this idea would make them more or less likely to vote in the next election – 22% said more likely, 10% said less likely, and 66% said it would have no effect.

The poll was funded by 692 Canadians who donated online through Leadnow.ca. Leadnow.ca supports cooperation for electoral reform. Interviewing for this Environics National Telephone Survey was conducted between March 18th – 24th, 2013, among a national random sample of 1,004 adults comprising 502 males and 502 females 18 years of age and older, living in Canada. The margin of error for a sample of this size is +/- 3.10%, 19 times out of 20.

PDF at link.

And it is just so cool that 692 Canadians paid for this.

I've signed up as a LPC supporter. I got my ID and PIN number yesterday. I'm going to vote for Joyce Murray. It won't stop the coronation, but if she gets enough votes, it may make rabid partisans think again.

I've also written to my NDP MP to report this. I've heard nothing back. Maybe I'll try again.

So, where's the CONspiracy? Has #TGDN gone global or delusional?

#TGDN = Twitter Gulag Defense Network.

In case you don't gaze towards the Excited States of America much these days, or don't tweet, this little right-wing nutjob conspiracy hoohaw might have not caught your attention.

From here:

Twitter makes it easy to report accounts for spam. When enough users report an account, it automatically gets suspended. Some users abuse this feature by organizing a group to report or “spam-block” a single account in order to get it suspended.

Conservatives created the “Twitter Gulag Defense Network” or #TGDN to stop spam-blocking attacks. Aware that accounts with more followers are less likely to get suspended, they mutually followed anyone else using #TGDN. Now that their group is organized and members are protected, they have begun targeted spam-blocking of progressive accounts, exactly what their group was created to oppose. Ironic.

Bloggers at LGF have been diligently following this phenomena and its permutations. Many have posted about the various Hatriots and other right-wing, firearm-fetishizing nutjobs who are involved.

One of my twitter friends, @fem_progress, drew my attention to this item:

A little known policy slips quietly under the radar in January 2012 as our friends at Twitter announce they will censor tweets, if a country’s government requests them to do so. A year later, Australia becomes the first modern democracy to identify, filter and ban free speech whilst not in a state of War.

In recent weeks, the censoring of tweets by Australian conservatives, or, indeed anyone who dares to either engage in political debate or offer opinion on the ruling Labor-Green alliance, has become so pervasive many have thought it was a bug with Twitter. You can read Twitter’s well hidden censorship policy here.

But now I can reveal that Twitter is actively censoring Australian tweets at the direct request of the government.

It sounds like the rantings of disgruntled Australian RWNJs and neo-cons, but if that Twitter policy does indeed exist, it could be deployed in accordance with the whims of a tinpot dictator like PMSHithead, at the request of his PMO/Politburo, to censor progressive or anti-Harper conservative tweets.

So, if this Aussie idiot has stumbled upon a MASSIVE ploy by his government, why hasn't that happened in Canada yet?  Critics of the Harper regime have certainly been quite vociferous in their excoriation of CPC electoral fraud, its corruption, its censorship of scientists and other public servants, its quasi-legal and illicit manipulations, its incessant prevarications and Rovian tactics.

My intuition tells me that it serves a greater purpose to have us scurrying around in plain view, expressing our anger, our fears, our hopes.

Harper's CPC is focused on perfecting the military precision of a volunteer and staff infrastructure that will facilitate the rigging of the next federal election in their favour, while their opponents are distraught, scattered and distracted.

Their May 2011 machinations were a taste of things to come.  Alison at Creekside has done an extraordinary job of investigative work on this matter.

So we have to get cracking on the coalition and cooperation-building NOW.  Talk is cheap, and the Cons have millions in their election war-chest, likely from the Koch Brothers foundations and possibly more that will be siphoned off from public funds now that Kevin Page is gone.

Money-Where-Our-Mouths-Are Time

LeadNow needs $10,000.

Donate to crowd-fund the opinion poll that could prove Canadians support political cooperation.

We know Canadians are ready for political cooperation to defeat Harper and pass crucial reforms. Now, we have to prove it.



We’ve put together a major opinion poll that could show widespread support for cooperation and rock national media and party leaders. Now, we urgently need your help to fund the poll. If enough of us chip in right now, we’ll be able to release the results before voting begins in the Liberal leadership race.



Every dollar gets us closer to commissioning this vital opinion poll - can you chip in right now to help make it happen?



At the beginning of the Liberal leadership campaign the only candidate in the race with a strong pro-cooperation position, Joyce Murray, was ignored by national media. But now, with just a few weeks left to the final vote, she is near the top of the race, and everyone is watching.

I mean, shit, if crowdsourcing can raise $2 million in a day for a movie based on a defunct teen-cult telly show (that I'd never heard of), surely a bunch of concerned Canadians can get this done.