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The Liberals also had 13 years to fix our electoral system so that the Tories would never be able to get this powerful. If we had had electoral reform in the 90s or 2000s, Prime Minister Stephen Harper would never have happened. Of course, the Liberals, almost to as great an extent as the Tories, are too hungry for power and patronage to tolerate the idea of relying on allies (such as the NDP, the Greens, or even the BQ, which I also prefer to the Liberals...Duceppe and his clique are much more progressive than any faction of the Liberal Party....That party has evolved a lot since Lulu the Neocon ran the show, to the extent that some BQ candidates are bonafide labour activists and a good number of them would be more at home in the NDP than anywhere else if the BQ did not exist, and both Quebec and Canada are all the richer for it...) that force them to keep the corruption in check.
If we had PR right now, we'd have a Lib-NDP-Green coalition with the BQ either abstaining or voting with the government depending on the issue...The Tories have gone so far to the right and the sovereigntists have gotten so socially liberal and anti-neocon that there is no way it would ever work.
But what it boils down is that too many Liberals are more concerned about gaining power for themselves and using the Tory bogeyman to get left-of-centre votes as opposed to making a pact with the left.
Hell, the worst case scenario in PR would be to have someone moderate and non-crazy like Brian Mulroney in power. I'm not a fan in the least bit (save for the whole anti-Apartheid thing), but Harper has the potential to make the Mulroney years look glorious.
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