Canadian Politics

Double post for update: The college teacher strike is now over. The Ontario Liberals and Conservatives teamed up for the vote over the objections of the NDP. Which is pretty much expected. The Conservatives pretty much always side with the employer, the NDP pretty much always sides with the union and Kathleen Wynne's Liberals always side with who can get the most votes. (She sided with the union at first because that's 12,000 votes, but she realized that the students were getting mad and that would cover over 400,000 votes. She is so transparent about this that it's getting stupid. And she's probably lost the students' vote completely because of this.)

It's gone to arbitration, so nothing's really set in stone yet in terms of what anyone gets out of it, but the students are back in class, as of Tuesday, at least.

From what I understand, even the legendary incompetence of the Ontario PC party can't save Wynne now.

Also Jamie Ballie, the leader of the Nova Scotia P Cs, is stepping down (he's staying on until a new leader is chosen). His record as party leader is mixed, in 2 elections he avoided any major scandals, and brought the Tories back from a rump 3rd party, to Official Opposition that came within one seats/a few hundred votes) of putting the Liberals in Minority territory. They also won a pair of seats in HRM, something the party hasn't done in decades (which means traditionally they've had to all but sweep rural Nova Scotia to form governments, which they used to do reliably).

However, he never won, and his personality can best be summed up as...."Chartered Accountant". He's good in the Assembly and as a manager, but even by our standards he's just dull.

Main reason I'm bringing this up is because Peter Mac Kay did not rule out running for the leadership. To this I say.

He's not crazy or anything, but why anyone would trust this man (regardless of their leanings) after one look at his career....

But he's got name recognition (which is probably the most important factor for the party right now), some charisma, a support network, and plenty of experience, so he definitely has a chance.

edited 19th Nov '17 12:42:51 PM by Rationalinsanity

From what I've seen, here's how the different Ontario parties are being seen right now.

Liberals: Under the control of a moron who's trying to use the popular parts of the NDP platform to pull the NDP voters...except that it isn't working at all because of how incompetent she's being at it. It's actually drawing attention to the NDP platform not away from it. None of the major figures in the party are doing anything that makes the Liberals seem like they've moved on from Dalton Mcguinty, who is still pretty unpopular.

Conservatives: Pretty boring, rarely say anything of substance, has an MPP that is the youngest ever elected in Canada (for the town of Lincoln) except that he's kind of dumb and waffles between bog standard Conservative boilerplate and random more extreme things. He's spoken out against gay marriage a couple times now. (Seriously, it's been the law for over ten years now. Unless you want to be the one to figure out how to deal with annulling tens of thousands of marriages and the tax and property implications that come from that, just give up and accept that it's a thing now.) There's not much actual draw to them. They are helped on the opinion side of things by John Tory, who is a waaaaaaaaay better Mayor than Ford was. But Tory is detached from the provincial party (city elections don't use parties), so it's unclear how much it will actually help.

NDP: Lead by a woman who says what they're going to do and what their positions are and sticks to it. They still have the stigma the NDP usually has with more conservative voters, but it seems to be eroding. They're also helped by the way a lot of people are genuinely excited about Jagmeet Singh (Federal NDP head) and if they can leverage it properly, they might be able to get the Indian vote, which is pretty big.

In the next election, the Conservatives will probably still win, if only because of the hardcore "always Conservative" voters, but it wouldn't surprise me if the Liberals just collapse and lose the Opposition position to the NDP. The Ontario Liberals suck so much right now that a temporary collapse wouldn't be that bad.

edited 19th Nov '17 12:59:37 PM by Zendervai

Syrian man assaults young boy; doesn't get jail time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTgsrqyUHR8

TL;DR: If immigrants want to come here, they should be held to the same standards as people who were born here. Ignorance of the law does not make you immune to it.

Huh? For the benefit of people who can‘t watch Youtube, what is this story about?

Stefan Molyneux crap with the title "Culture Collapse in Canada. Prepare Yourself Accordingly".

This is the article the video quotes as a source, if anyone's interested in the story but wants to avoid giving the nazi dumbass ad revenue.

edited 19th Nov '17 3:23:14 PM by IFwanderer

For a first time offence from a refugee who probably has PTSD? I think 24 months probation with mandatory counseling and restricted locations is reasonable. Because probation isn’t just a way of getting out of jail, it’s a huge pain and if you slip up at all, you go to jail anyway. It’s certainly much better at rehabilitation than straight up prison.

And anyway, Stefan Molyneux is not a good source. He tends to be extremely inaccurate when it comes to the larger implications of an event, at best. He’s also very prone to outright making up details and facts about a situation in order to make his own position even make sense.

edited 19th Nov '17 3:40:49 PM by Zendervai

Honest question: would you consider any right-wing source as accurate? This forum tends to be extremely left-wing and I've had my opinions shouted down in the past.

edited 19th Nov '17 4:21:48 PM by TempestKnight

I'll assume you meant right-wing sources. If so, there's The Economist.

EDIT: This chart might be helpful◊, altough I don't agree 100% with the placement of some media in it.

edited 19th Nov '17 4:40:30 PM by IFwanderer

If it’s an official Canadian news source, I’d accept it. Except maybe Conrad Black. He’s just a pretty awful person.

But Stefan Molyneux specifically is a terrible source. He filters everything through his quite frankly bizarre biases. There are no truly unbiased sources, but his bias is slanted so far that he’s completely unreliable when it comes to the facts and interpretation.

He’s also, you know, not a news source. He’s an editorialist, and editorialists should never be your primary source on anything. You can learn about something from them, but you should probably do your own research from a variety of sources to make sure they actually know what they’re talking about.

edited 19th Nov '17 4:59:51 PM by Zendervai

National Post is pretty good, for the most part.

As for this case; I'd have to see what the normal sentence range for this offense, under these conditions (guilty plea, first time offender, psychological issues, remorse, etc) are. I have a feeling that this was a normal penalty, and that a similar offender who happens to be a citizen would probably get the same treatment.

Do note, this was the sentence the Crown asked for (defense wanted a conditional discharge), so there was probably a lacked of precedent for jail time. If he does violate his parole, the suspended sentence can become an actual one (and he'd probably end up deported).

Was the sentence too light? That's subjective (even though I do lean towards a few months at least, but treatment is the big part here). Did his refugee status factor into things? Maybe, but it wasn't the key factor from what I can tell, judges are heavily bound by precedent in sentencing.

Also, he's now got a indictable offense, assault no less, on his record. That's nothing to shake a stick at.

edited 19th Nov '17 5:19:07 PM by Rationalinsanity

In my experience it's the mainstream media that can't be trusted. To each their own.

edited 19th Nov '17 5:27:55 PM by TempestKnight

We may each be entitled to our own news channels but we’re not each entitled to our own facts.

Yup. "The mainstream media" may have a slant in what events they choose to portray and how they frame them, but they don't usually provide inaccurate facts, for the simple reason that they have eyes on each other. A blanket mistrust of the mainstream media is a huge red flag for "I Reject Your Reality And Susbtitute It For Whatever My Favourite Ideologists Tell Me Instead".

I've heard otherwise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efrVhE1SvwQ

Russia Today saying that Russian meddling is a bullshit narrative is like an anti-vaxxer trying to convince you that the entire medical profession is in a conspiracy with big-pharma to give everybody autism. Of course they'd say everyone else is lying, they're trying to cover their ass.

Such a reliable newsource that one. Totally with no agenda regarding Russia, Ukraine or the "mainstream media".

Also post a summary of what you're linking. It's literally in the forum rules.

Trudeau and Notley ask the Edmonton Eskimos to consider changing the name of their team.

Much like south of the Border with the Redskins, some fans consider it more important to stick to a prejorative term for the team name, coz, ya know, traditions.

Hopefully it will get changed. I'm not even sure what the name has to do with Edmonton in the first place in addition to the slur thing.

When I heard about that I asked a relative who lives in that area if he knew. It’s because it’s alliterative. That’s basically it.

I was going to suggest Edmonton Elks, but that’s already taken by a rugby team.

And the Eskimos are a football team. Yeah, that already means they’re less important culturally than the Redskins are in the US. They could change their name and there wouldn’t be nearly as much branding to change.

edited 22nd Nov '17 9:58:03 PM by Zendervai

Yeah I figured it was due to alliteration too. So is there anything that starts with an E, makes sense for a Canadian sports team, isn't racist, and isn't already taken?

edited 22nd Nov '17 9:57:02 PM by M84

All that’s coming to mind is the electric wheelchair, the electric car heater and the egg carton. (Seriously, those are all Canadian inventions).

I don’t think anyone would go see a game by a team called the Edmonton Egg Cartons. It would be kind of funny to see what kind of mascot they came up with.

...it would basically be Humpty Dumpty in a football uniform, wouldn’t it.

edited 22nd Nov '17 10:03:46 PM by Zendervai

I don't think having a mascot based on a character whose only accomplishment was to clumsily fall and shatter himself would be too good for team morale.

I guess if you wanted something egg related you could use a chicken. I was going to make a crass joke about using a mighty cock as the mascot instead, but it wouldn't have worked since roosters don't lay eggs.

edited 22nd Nov '17 10:46:43 PM by M84

Well, you still need one if you want some fertilized eggs for the next generation of chickens...