Disqus - Latest Comments for russellmcormond

Re: Why New Democrats might (secretly) welcome Lori Idlout’s defection

Russell McOrmond — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 16:14:31 -0000

Their chosen form of electoral reform matters.

Ballot ranking reduces corporate influence and helps to decentralize campaigns so the local representatives can matter more.

Corporate brand focuses benefits cross-Canada corporate brand recognition.

Politics isn't linear between "left-and-right" on a single issue, but a spectrum (like the electromagnetic spectrum). The bigger the merged corporate branding, the less representative parliament can be.

Other than corporate team colours, which benefits corporate executives only, there really isn't anything meaningful in common with an urban Toronto NDP and a rural Alberta NDP candidate.

There should be no cross-Canada corporate party brands, as the concept is antithetical to strong citizen representation.

Re: Why New Democrats might (secretly) welcome Lori Idlout’s defection

Russell McOrmond — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 15:11:43 -0000

The idea that the NDP is anti-Corporate is nullified by their corporate culture that fixates on corporate brands - such as the notion there is a brand-centric "popular support".

There was a chance to get rid of vote splitting via ranked ballots, and help get rid of the fixation on the 2 most likely brands to take over the executive branch. Unfortunately the corporate culture of the NDP and GPC blocked that improvement.

i have supported several candidates and MPs who ran under the NDP brand, but have never supported the brand.

Re: Carney shifts Canada’s position as Trump fails to justify war against Iran

Russell McOrmond — Sat, 07 Mar 2026 09:29:26 -0000

I think if more people realized how much the corporations of the NDP and GPC were as much a block against democratic accountability as the CPC and LPC, then they might try to organize for change.

The myth that a different corporate team jersey is all that is needed to fix political issues is itself the greatest barrier to having strong Democratic Institutions. The power is being granted to the few by people who actually believe they are opposing the powerful.

Re: Carney shifts Canada’s position as Trump fails to justify war against Iran

Russell McOrmond — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 17:10:19 -0000

Would you be willing to expand?

Is this really a comment about Rabble, or is it actually a comment about Canada?

Christian Zionism predates Jewish Zionism by centuries, and Canada has been a Christian Zionist set of governments since they were imposed on this continent in 1867. How Canada treats the modern state of Israel today is very consistent with the “None Is Too Many” policies towards Jewish refugees around and during the Shoah 1933–1948.

I don't expect objectivity on the modern State of Israel from the modern State of the Dominion of Canada.

Is the complaint that Rabble hasn't completely rejected the Identity, Values and Culture of Canada itself in its reporting as part of Canadian media?

Re: Carney shifts Canada’s position as Trump fails to justify war against Iran

Russell McOrmond — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 17:09:24 -0000

The modern nation-state of Israel isn’t controlling US, Canadian or other Anglosphere or Western government policy.

What is happening is that Christian Zionist countries, who are Zionist for fundamentally antisemitic reasons, are providing support for the Zionist project.

Understanding the difference between the motivations of Christian Zionists and Jewish Zionists (and being aware of anti-Zionist Jewish people) is critical to understanding what is happening, and avoiding antisemitic tropes about a tiny population somehow being in control of other countries.

Re: Carney shifts Canada’s position as Trump fails to justify war against Iran

Russell McOrmond — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 16:57:28 -0000

Canadian federal voters have been forced to vote strategically since 2019, to avoid vote splitting, because the NDP and Greens partnered with the Conservatives during the ERRE committee to block Ranked Choice Voting that would have eradicated the concept of vote splitting federally.

We have all seen the problems with power being moved more and more into the executive branches of governments, whether with the US or Canadian governments, and yet the push for party lists and further control in the hands of corporate party leadership is still being demanded by the NDP and GPC leadership.

This only weakens already weak Democratic Institutions.

After boundary redistribution, my home is now considered Ottawa Center, where the Conservatives aren't relevant. My many-decades concern about strengthening Democratic Institutions is one of the primary reasons I don't vote for the local NDP nominated candidate. I have only voted for an NDP nominated candidate once, when my home was part of Ottawa South, and where the NDP candidate was Huda Mukbil who in conversations seem very willing to do the right thing rather than blindly following the dictates of the corporate party HQ.

Re: Carney shifts Canada’s position as Trump fails to justify war against Iran

Russell McOrmond — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 16:42:16 -0000

While I disagree with the conclusion that comment tried to make around trust, I believe the inclusion of the original use of the term "foolish" would have enhanced what you were trying to say.

There is so many in this culture that doesn't allow for people to learn, either in the short term or the long term. I notice people taking comments made decades earlier and presuming people are incapable of change.

You then have people who have no growth, no learning, and make random statements they never mean even in the moment -- and far too many in this culture can't tell the difference between the lifelong learner and the unaccountable fool.

Re: NDP leadership committee rejects Yves Engler’s candidacy application

Russell McOrmond — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 20:06:30 -0000

One of the things I learned is that hierarchical corporate partisans dislike STV for many of the reasons we like it - such as that it enables VOTERS to have preferences between candidates of the same party (and have opinions different than the corporation).

I have always found it confusing that NDP loyalists are so corporate - which you would think goes against party ideals.

Re: NDP leadership committee rejects Yves Engler’s candidacy application

Russell McOrmond — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 09:19:31 -0000

I do most of my social media discussions on Substack these days.

Re: NDP leadership committee rejects Yves Engler’s candidacy application

Russell McOrmond — Sat, 13 Dec 2025 07:35:15 -0000

I find it interesting how some NDP loyalists look at the seriously flawed and corrupt US corporate party system as some sort of ideal.

Donald Trump is merely a mirror held up to make what the US systems have become more visible. This direction has been discussed and predicted for several decades.

Rather than taking the USA as a warning, NDP loyalists seem to want more of that corporate corruption here. It isn't like the US Democrats are any better on Democratic Institutions than the US Republicans, and the US Democrats have also had many opportunities to make critically important changes to decentralize governance to make it less vulnerable to corruption.

You appear to be fixated on one individual. If the NDP put the elected parliamentary caucus in charge of their own leadership, rather than an external corporate fan club imposing from outside, then Yves would still not likely be leader. Yves hadn't even been elected as a parliamentarian yet, and those who have never been parliamentarians shouldn't even be in the running to be the "leader". The "destructive delusion" you are worried about is caused by the policies you seem to be promoting, not solved by them.

"Should it be easy to find candidates for a leadership election that probably shouldn't happen?" from Jan 2020
flora . ca / should-it-be-easy-to-find-candidates

Re: NDP leadership committee rejects Yves Engler’s candidacy application

Russell McOrmond — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 16:53:04 -0000

It is sad to note the prevalence of the False Binary logical fallacy in political discussions. If you don't bow to the Anglosphere version of geopolitics then you are pro-Putin, pro-terrorist, or some other nonsense.

Far too many people living on this continent (which had many names long before Europeans came here, before some started to call the region "Canada") have put specific foreign ideologies as core to their identity. They want everything to be some binary "us vs them", and will declare anyone with any ability to have nuance as a "them".

BTW: I'm not a fan of when anyone conflates Judaism, Zionism and the modern State of Israel. Given the power of Zionist propaganda under Canadian institutions, which regularly conflates these things (the Prime Minister does it regularly), I understand source of the confusion. I wish Yves Engler was more clear, but I don’t think bureaucrats part of the NDP corporate fan club (as opposed to NDP caucus) should have the ability to block candidates that aren’t even as offensive as the current Canadian Prime Minister.

Re: NDP leadership committee rejects Yves Engler’s candidacy application

Russell McOrmond — Fri, 12 Dec 2025 16:39:11 -0000

The Not Democratic Party continues to show itself.

I'm not an opponent of any specific candidate, but the idea that a bunch of bureaucrats within the "corporate fan club" form of the party, rather than elected representatives of the parliamentary caucus part of the party, is making "leadership" decisions demonstrates the disinterest in Democratic Institutions associated with the NDP corporate brand.

The NDP caucus needs to get out from under corporate control, and disallows marketing and brand staff to have any say over what caucus members do. Maybe it is time for them all to "cross the floor" and create ADP (Actually Democratic Party) that isn't fixated on corporate interests.

"Each party, as we know them, exists as two discrete parties. Parties exist inside the House of Commons as Parliamentary caucuses which, if large enough, become “recognised parties” and don’t legally require any association with an outside party. The parties as we know them outside the Chamber are fan clubs, complete with fundraising, marketing, and merchandising. Canada is a parliamentary democracy and not a presidential democracy, and it should be the political parties within the House that choose from among their number their own leaders."

See:

davidgraham . ca / leadership-by-caucus
flora . ca / lets-work-to-fix-parliamentary-flaws

Re: As campaign ends progressive voters agonize over how to get the Parliament they want

Russell McOrmond — Sun, 04 May 2025 21:42:57 -0000

Substack is designed to allow people to have conversations about what someone wrote, without those comments appearing as part of that other person's site.

Hit "restack with note" and have your own conversation with your own community in your own notes. Anyone who wants to look at conversations elsewhere on Substack can easily see a list of everyone who restacked (with or without notes).

Nobody owes you any right to join their conversation, only to not be able to stop you from having your own conversation.

Only having participants in a conversation you want, and to moderate/delete comments you don't believe help a conversation that are attached to your own site, is critical to "achieving a open, transparent and fulsome participatory dialogue."

Get a Substack account, create your own site, post on your own notes, create your community.

Note: I don't charge for my Substack, but I delete troll/spam/etc comments.

Re: As campaign ends progressive voters agonize over how to get the Parliament they want

Russell McOrmond — Sun, 04 May 2025 09:31:02 -0000

As I exit threads connected to this article, to avoid repeating things that have been said many times between specific individuals over the last decade, I want to leave a link to a Substack article.

Here We Go Again On Electoral Reform, by past Canadian federal MP David Graham
davidgraham dot ca/p/we-must-re-empower-voters-over-parties
(replace " dot " with ".")

The parliament I want relates to having empowered people working in a safe workplace as representatives of citizens, not as a parliament empowering corporate special interests (using the term "political party") to have obedient soldiers in an ideological warzone.

In this, self-identifying "progressives" and their insistence on focusing on divisive concepts such as "party popular vote" and optimizing for Gallagher index have been a huge source of what has lead to the growth of other grievance based parties such as Reform, Bloc, etc.

David Graham includes a video that discusses why it is impossible to design a system based purely on mathematical formulas that will match a concept of "fairness". Fairness and trust in our Democratic Institutions, and reducing the ideological warzones, must be given a priority over optimizing only for some subset of Canadian's concept of fairness or their favorite formulas for "measuring fairness".

While you are on David Graham’s site, please look at his previous article about “Parliament and Parenthood” where he talks about the toxic culture that Canadians have imposed on that workplace we all know as the House of Commons.

Re: As campaign ends progressive voters agonize over how to get the Parliament they want

Russell McOrmond — Sat, 03 May 2025 15:36:21 -0000

First, I believe that what communities want and how they wish to be represented matters more than mathematics. It is not a numbers game, as so many on so many sides of the debate want to suggest.

Whether it is discussing a fixed district magnitude (regardless of whether it is 1 or greater than one), or if talking about optimizing mathematics for parties (Gallagher index), the narrow focus on math is going to leave people feeling disenfranchised and generate alienation from government.

There is considerable talk about Western and Quebec feelings of alienation (and even separation), but those are not the only examples even if often the loudest. There is also a huge difference between urban, suburban and rural in how they think - and thus what neighbouring districts they would feel are associated vs opposition.

How current single -district regions are merged to create multi-member districts should not be decided in some central authority, but by the regions themselves. Otherwise you are only generating opposition to the reform. This is what happened in Ontario's referendum where less densely populated regions (including the northern 2/3) opposed reform.

All my experiences in this policy area suggests that district magnitude needs to not be merged with other aspects of reform (ranking vs X's, whether to give partisans an extra ballot question, etc).

I also don't think a focus on labels matters as much as clarifying outcomes. I'm a computer nerd and love math and other such things, but I've learned that changing names for mathematical reasons causes a majority of people to tune out.

Re: As campaign ends progressive voters agonize over how to get the Parliament they want

Russell McOrmond — Sat, 03 May 2025 11:58:59 -0000

Many people have different ideas of what "the problem" is, so have a different lens for observing whether someone else having a "path to solving" or not.

For me, the problems I am concerned with are *inside* the House of Commons, that critically important workplace that is one of the parts of the Legislative Branch (the Senate being the other). The executive branch is not elected with Canada's Parliamentary System, but formed by (and should always be accountable to) the Legislative Branch. The third branch is judicial, and each branch must always be able to hold each other to account.

I consider conversations about organization within political parties outside of parliament (IE: the corporate fan clubs, not the party caucuses -- whether a party that is internally "democratic" or not), creating pre-election coalition parties (As I see with the Reform/Conservative Alliance, the LPC and the NDP - the GPC and Bloc are separate special interest groups), or a pre-election vote to decode how to really vote, to all be examples of foreign interference that is gaming the House of Commons rather than trying to fix any real problems.

If the different ways that "political party" is used, see:
davidgraham dot ca/p/leadership-by-caucus

As long as the focus is outside the House of Commons, trying to game or take over the House of Commons, and not on enabling citizens to bring in empowered representatives (people, not special interest groups) into the House of Commons, then I'm not going to be interested. I don't consider this external interference to be constructive problem-solving, as I don't see it as being related to the problems I'm concerned with at all.

Re: As campaign ends progressive voters agonize over how to get the Parliament they want

Russell McOrmond — Sat, 03 May 2025 09:44:14 -0000

This pre-election poll suggestion sounds familiar. Is this Eduard Hiebert?

If not, then I'll clarify my views in this particular area of policy.

I see the House of Commons as a workplace, where citizens are the ones hiring people to do a job in that workplace. Parliament should not be, as it has become, a warzone for competing special interests.

There are people who want to focus on "organizing" outside the House of Commons, whether than be in the form of political parties (and thus all this focus on party proportionality, and other harmful thinking), or as VOTERS (rather than citizens) gaming the voting system to try to get some specific interest into parliament via a back door. I'm not interested in partisanship or pre-election anything, but in having citizens be more engaged in politics between elections and for the right people (not employees of some corporation, which is what has happened with parties) acting as empowered representatives of fellow citizens in the House of Commons.

The focus for me is on the House of Commons, and the ability of those representatives of citizens to do their job within a critical branch of Canada's Democratic Institutions. I'm not remotely interested in these other side-quests. My interest in electoral reform is as a part of reform of Democratic Institututions, and I don't see any value in thinking of electoral reform out of that context.

I also believe that district magnitude should be decided by voters in their regions, and not from on-high (by parties or by parliament). It is NOT for some urban person to say "according to some abstract mathematical formula, the district magnitude should be "x"), nor is it for some rural person to say that it must be 1 as that is the only district magnitude that makes sense in their particular lives. We need to get past individuals imposing on others the "one true" solution to the "one true" problem, and recognize that what some call "Canada" governs a massive diversity of peoples who should be treated with equity (which is an extremely different concept than equality, as we are all served equally poorly by current systems).

Re: As campaign ends progressive voters agonize over how to get the Parliament they want

Russell McOrmond — Sun, 27 Apr 2025 17:45:52 -0000

When specific academics wish to claim generic English words as reserved words with a specialized meaning within narrow domains, that adds friction to discussion of anything that is outside of the confines of those specific academics.

I don't think it is helpful for me to suggest I'm opposed to "proportionality" merely because I don't believe that "If x% of voters voted for candidates with a specific party affiliation, then x% of seats in parliament should be of the same party affiliation". I strongly believe in parliamentrians holding parties to account, through floor crossing and other techniques that counter that narrow way of viewing parliaments.

I DO want to ensure that seats are allocated to human candidates (with all their intersectionality) in proportion to the support these candidates had with voters, which requires district magnitudes larger than 1 (due to "whole person entering parliament" rounding errors/etc).

I don't see how using a specific academic's language silo is helpful when not discussing with specific other academics, especially since different people seem to take different academics as their lead.

I'm assuming "David M Farrell" was who you were referencing. He was even a co-author of a chapter in "The Politics of Electoral Systems", which I found extremely frustrating to read as it was academics having discussions divorcing how the theories impacted the actual workings of a parliament. I think reform discussions should talk about the public servants in that workplace first (parliament is a workplace, not intended to be a warzone between competing special interest groups), and look at more abstract theories later.

BTW: STV is demographic neutral. It works to allocate seats in proportion to the support received by candidates. It doesn't matter what aspect of that person caused voter support, which is entirely different from what you want to more specifically call "party functioned" systems, and suggest that the word "proportionality" is reserved to only ever mean "party functioned" systems.

Re: As campaign ends progressive voters agonize over how to get the Parliament they want

Russell McOrmond — Sun, 27 Apr 2025 14:31:39 -0000

I agree that FVC's use of the word "proportional" means something very specific to their ideology, but don't agree that I am. A system can be proportional to many things other than party affiliation, and even the least squares used in the Gallagher index can measure proximity to a parliament proportional to other demographic traits.

Words may have been used by a specific group of people at a specific time, but that doesn't define the meanings of words. If with 2007 you are making reference to the 2007 Ontario electoral reform referendum, and the specific Citizens Assembly that made that MMP recommendation? I'm not sure why that specific narrow set of lobbying needs to be taken as the baseline for understanding electoral reform in the Canadian context.

I agree words are important, which is why I reject words narrowly defined to try to promote a very specific ideology such as how FVC manipulates language.

Re: As campaign ends progressive voters agonize over how to get the Parliament they want

Russell McOrmond — Sun, 27 Apr 2025 13:56:29 -0000

And the GPC.... Even though I was a campaigner for the GPC and GPO in the 1990's, I believe they need radical reform and/or replacement.

After helping the NDP to block ranked ballots, this election they were so worried about vote splitting that they didn't nominate sufficient candidates to be allowed in the debates held by the Leaders' Debates Commission. They claimed they were relying on those debates to introduce Canadians to their unelected co-leader (someone who has never been a parliamentarian).

"In order to be invited by the Commission to participate in the leaders' debates, a leader of a registered political party must meet two of the following criteria:

(i): on the date the general election is called, the party is represented in the House of Commons by a Member of Parliament who was elected as a member of that party.

(ii): 28 days before the date of the general election, the party receives a level of national support of at least 4%, determined by voting intention, and as measured by leading national public opinion polling organizations, using the average of those organizations' most recently publicly-reported results.

(iii): 28 days before the date of the general election, the party has endorsed candidates in at least 90% of federal ridings."

GPC met (i), but didn't meet (ii), so they were dependent on (iii). They CHOSE not to run sufficient candidates like they did other years, and thus chose to not be in the leaders debate.

The Bloc met (ii), even though they only nominate candidates in Quebec and thus can never meet (iii).

Re: As campaign ends progressive voters agonize over how to get the Parliament they want

Russell McOrmond — Sun, 27 Apr 2025 13:45:13 -0000

We shouldn't concentrate on language only in specific scenarios, and trying so hard to separate out IRV from STV when the much larger language confusion is around party-centric proportionality vs demographic neutral proportionality.

I agree that demographic neutral proportionality is critical, but believe that demographic neutral proportionality is a substantially greater difference from party-centric proportionality than ranked ballots where DM is always 1 (IE: AV) is different than DM most often greater than 1 (STV).

MMP and DMP are far more similar to FPTP than AV is, even if I agree that MMP and AV are both different from FPTP, and all these narrow options are lesser than STV.

Re: As campaign ends progressive voters agonize over how to get the Parliament they want

Russell McOrmond — Sun, 27 Apr 2025 10:48:32 -0000

"First Past the Post system that mixes up voter intention with an eggbeater,"

Agreed, but I would expand this:

SMP (Single Member Plurality, also known as FPTP) is treated in Canada as a party list of one (District Magnitude 1)

DMP (Dual Member Proportional) is a party list of two (District Magnitude 2)

MMP (Mixed Member Proportional) is party lists with a mixture of district magnitudes, some District Magnitude of 1 and some of an as-yet-undisclosed district magnitude as proponents are never clear on that critical question.

All of these single-X per question systems mix up voter intention with an eggbeater, and all should have been rejected decades ago as not appropriate for Canada’s Westminster Parliamentary Democracy. Canada’s system is extremely different from the US presidential system, as Canadian voters don’t and can’t directly elect the executive branch, even if the mainstream corporate media (including CBC) and other special interests claim otherwise.

Unfortunately, proponents of those systems have taken over all conversations about reform.

Canada should be rejecting that class of single-X per question systems, and instead be looking at ranked ballot systems where we create a Made For Canada mixture of district magnitudes that take the realities of Canadian geopolitics into consideration. We need a Mixed District Magnitude Ranked Ballot Proportional system, something in the large class of systems people regularly lump under the term Single Transferrable Vote.

Re: As campaign ends progressive voters agonize over how to get the Parliament they want

Russell McOrmond — Sun, 27 Apr 2025 10:33:46 -0000

I wish I could look forward to a future where NDP and Green affiliated candidates, allegedly what "progressives" would prefer to be voting for, weren't the largest barriers to ending strategic voting.

While there are siloed hyper-partisans for which there is "one true answer" for any question, and they are happy with a single-X mark (whether for a person, party, or both in the case of their preference of MMP which gives partisans 2 votes and others only the same flawed vote we have now), that way of thinking disenfranchises the rest of us.

Contrary to what NDP/GPC/FVC partisans claim, STV was an option in 2016 which they rejected. They have been lobbying against "Ranked Ballots" which they falsely equate with single-member district ranked ballots, when STV is an example of ballot ranking and not an example of the narrow silo of party centric proportionality. Unlike MMP/DMP/etc, STV is proportional across any demographic trait you wish to measure against, not merely party affiliation.

NDP/GPC/FVC need radical reform or be disbanded and replaced in order for Canada's Democratic Institutions to become stronger.

Re: As campaign ends progressive voters agonize over how to get the Parliament they want

Russell McOrmond — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 21:56:41 -0000

We will see about the internal trade -- it was the Federal Government created provinces (carved out of NWT, not colonies entering Confederation) such as Alberta and Saskatchewan that blocked internal energy policy in the past. I doubt the energy corridor is going to happen because Alberta elites want to externalize all costs and risks, but keep all profits to themselves.

Neoliberal trade and economic policy is being misunderstood by those unwilling to read a tiny bit of history. These are right-wing policies, and yet there are people confused by the word "liberal" and think it is adherents to neoliberal ideology like Reform party Pierre Polievre that are going to fix the problems it is causing.

Re: As campaign ends progressive voters agonize over how to get the Parliament they want

Russell McOrmond — Sat, 26 Apr 2025 15:36:16 -0000

I'm curious, when you say "jurisdictions" do you mean the Western world, the Anglosphere, or more smaller regions like the Praries (Alberta especially)?

I don't blame Albertans for their narrow focus on extraction beyond the planet's caring capacity. The Government of Alberta was created by the Canadian Crown for that purpose, and after many generations of one culture being indoctrinated into people it will take time to move away from it.

flora dot ca/p/alberta