CANADA, BY COMPARISON

Canada political
Couldn’t resist putting this up to compare with the last post. This shows, in red, the parts of Canada where at least 45% of voters in last June’s election voted for conservative/christian parties. All Canada’s major cities are blue by this criterion, except Calgary in SW Alberta. For those Americans who are thinking of coming to Canada and want to avoid such areas they are from West to East: The Eastern suburbs/exurbs of Vancouver BC, the Okanagan Valley in Central BC, the mountainous SE corner of BC, the stretch of BC from Prince Rupert on the West Coast up to the NE corner, all of Alberta except the City of Edmonton, rural South and Central Saskatchewan, rural SW Manitoba, the rural areas of South Central and far Eastern Ontario, the rural areas on the South Coast of New Brunswick and the North Coast of Nova Scotia. There are other parts of Canada that Canadians would call conservative, but by US standards they just don’t measure up.

Canadian readers will find this confusing because we use the opposite colour conventions (Liberal red and Tory blue), but I’ve reversed them so they’re consistent with the US map. Interesting, eh?

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8 Responses to CANADA, BY COMPARISON

  1. Interesting maps. It should be noted that our red is not near as far right wing as the American red and on some issues is further left than even the American democrats. Most specifically health care where Canadians just won’t accept anything but publicly funded health care. Also, Canadian conservatives are not nearly as intertwined with religion as those in the U.S. although Stockwell Day was pretty extreme (and it cost him big in the east come election time and his views I still think are costing them votes). But, like the American republicans Canadian Conservatives have a base in oil money (Alberta) as well as being anti-gun control (rural Canadians).

  2. Darren says:

    It’s extremely misleading to characterize the Canadian right wing as “conservative/christian”. Yes, the Conservative Party is, obviously, conservative, but they’re not fundamentally or universally Christian. First, check out this Google search. Not a single mention of Christianity on their site:http://www.google.com/search?as_q=christianity&num=10&hl=en&c2coff=1&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservative.ca&safe=offComplete searches for ‘religion’ or ‘church’ and you’ll get a similar dearth of results. Then, consider Gurmant and Nina Grewal and Rahim Jaffer. Those are two Sikh and one Muslim MPs who are also members of the Conservative Party. It’d be rather peculiar to find them in a Christian party, wouldn’t it? It would be equally odd to find Jewish MPs like Ezra Levant or James Rajotte.Yes, the Conservative Party has the most traditional perspective of the major Canadian parties. Obviously, conservative Christians are going to be attracted to that organization. So, apparently, are a breadth of people of other faiths.You do a disservice to your readers and lay bear your liberal bias when you heap every right-of-centre Canadian politician into the “conservative/christian” pile.This comes to you, incidentally, from a guy who voted for the Green Party in June.

  3. gbreez says:

    Will you still help us when and if we decide it is time to escape? I am getting scared. My son, who is of draft age, is talking about self-immolation as an alternative to Iraq. He may not qualify for immigration status. Do you think there may be a corridor?Also,I am a Pagan and the Christian Reconstructionists who are now running things believe that I should be either stoned or put to fire. I am afraid of fire.Dave?

  4. Dave Pollard says:

    Darren: My intent wasn’t to say the cap-C Conservatives are synonymous with Christians. The 45% threshold included both conservative and christian parties like the CHP. My point was totry to come up with an indication of which parts of Canada had a values-set similar to that of mainstream US conservatives. I grew up in Manitoba, and found the prevailing worldview in the South-Western parts of that province very consistent with that of neighbouring North Dakotans, but completely different from that in the Interlake district (which was settled mostly by Scandanavians) or Winnipeg (which was settled extensively by Eastern Europeans, and has a heavy Native population). There was a survey about a week before the election that indicated that if Canadians could have voted in the election they would have voted 84-16% for Kerry. My point is to try to identify where at 16% Bush vote would likely be concentrated, and also to contrast theworldview of most Canadians vs Americans. It wasn’t meant as an attempt to portray the Conservative Party as christian, but rather to use the voting patterns as a surrogate for the presence ofconservative worldview. gbreez: Bush has stated on the record he won’t reintroduce the draft, and I really think he’d prefer to avoid it, since even among conservatives the notion is not popular. And maybe I’m naive, but the but I think the proportion of christians who would see Bush’s re-election as a mandate for terrorist behaviour against ‘non-believers’ is small. Because of the vast difference in mindsets betweenliberals and conservatives that Lakoff describes, i think there’s a lot more fear and paranoia (going both ways) than is warranted. Unfortunately whipping up thatfear and paranoia is a good election ploy. Having said that, we’ll do what we can to help Americans fleeing either the persecution or the simple irrationality of the Americaof the 21sr century, to find a home here in Canada. The Canadian government is actually quite helpfulin this — until recently only about 5000 people per year made the trek,nd I think the Canadian Immigration Centre is actually quite flattered witrh all the media attention they’re getting this past week.

  5. David Jones says:

    I think we need to point out to our US friends that aligning yourself as a political candidate with a particular religious belief would be the Kiss of Death in Canada. Something like 65% of US citizens think it is OK that their President “consults with God” about major decisions. If the Canadian Prime Minister ever said they they’d laugh him out of office.

  6. Adam says:

    It’s silly of you to list Souris-Moose Mountain in Saskatchewan as a “liberal” constituency. It’s one of the bluest (Tory blue) constituencies in the country. The only reason it didn’t reach your 45% threshold in the last election was because the former Conservative premier, Grant Devine, was running as an Independent, and he siphoned off some vote from the Conservative candidate. But when you add together their 27% and 37% of the vote, you find that 64% of people in that constituency voted for a conservative candidate.

  7. Dave Pollard says:

    AW: Thanks for the links. I found the first link more useful than the second: David Brooks is one of the most muddle-headed editorialists I’ve ever read, and what he writes as fact is usually (conservative) wishful thinking and overstatement.Adam: You’re right. I should have included it. That would add another swatch of conservative red to the SE corner of Saskatchewan.In fact, there’s an argument that both red areas of Saskatchewan should be extended South to the US border.

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