Canadian Politics

Does complaining in the CBC comments section count?

Unless it's sparked a grassroots movement, then no.

I don't see how Harper could declare himself dictator without... something happening.

(Have I become so jaded that I can honestly see Harper declaring himself dictator of a democratic country just north of the US and no one there raising a significant objection?)

edited 14th Apr '12 4:44:08 AM by GameChainsaw

Well, if we take these Canadian tropers' word as fact, there appears to be no significant uproar. So yes, your jaded-ism is not unfounded.

We just have to wait until he attacks or screws up something we actually care about. And since I can't see him trying censor Hockey Night in Canada anytime soon... that will probably involve the economy somehow. Maybe a key civil right.

Well, he'll eventually close down CBC, he's already shut down This Hour Has 22 Minutes partially, the number one show attacking him on air.

Canadians aren't going to care. He might get a third Contempt of Parliament charge soon enough and I bet you voters won't even know what that means and not bother. Democracy in action!

As for the dictatorship, the way that Harper has been abusing the military, shutting off their lines of communication and replacing military PR with his own has been grating heavily on the rank and file. It depends how stupid our soldiers are in believing Harper's rhetoric and I think our soldier's are intelligent enough to see past the bullshit. If you see high ranking C Os and so on in interviews about UN operations, peacekeeping or other international relation issues, they are extremely calm, very articulate and most are capable of writing opinion pieces on CBC. So, when I see Harper taking away their pay, their benefits, lowering danger compensation, eliminating disabilities, taking away pension, asking them to go to war whenever he feels like it, I think that the military will start to balk. They won't take action until Harper subsumes a dictatorship and then he can get toppled once he goes too far for the military elite to take it.

In other news, Harper is attempting to open up Canada's natural resources to Latin American investors. He is encouraging them by basically stating that environmental reviews will be rubberstamped.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/04/14/harper-summit-americas.html

edited 14th Apr '12 12:59:20 PM by breadloaf

He what.

Is that not because Norway isn't a member of the EU...?

Aren't they part of the economic whatever? It's what I meant to say anyway.

Well, I don't really know myself, hence the ellipsis and question mark.

Wait... what did he do to 22 minutes? Granted the show has been going through Seasonal Rot since Rick Mercer left a while back...

And, according to the Security Policy class I took this term, the average Canadian soldier is better educated than the general population. The Forces, and especially on the Reserves, will go out of their to accommodate those in College and university and officers pretty much need at least one Master's degree to go anywhere.

Norway is part of the European Economic Area/European Free Trade Area, which is administered by the EU, but not part of it.

Anyway, as Norway is not part of the EU proper, any Harper crap aimed at the EU will not directly affect Norway.

So, Harper is basically propagandising? Are there many pro-Harper media outlets?

A few local ones. The CBC is sorta like the BBC in that it has to be neutral. Most Canadian media outlets lack the stones and funding to actually stir the pot to any meaningful degree.

To folks from outside Canada - no, there's no chance of Harper forming a dictatorship.

There's something of an in-joke about Canadian politics that a majority government is an "elected dictatorship" (they said the same thing about the Liberal government under Chrétien). There's a very strong tradition of M Ps voting with their party here, even more so than in Britain (and certainly more so than Congresspeople in the US), so a party with a majority government can basically pass any law they like provided it doesn't violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. (Incidentally, the Supreme Court's been taking a pretty free hand interpreting the Charter [among other things, they've ruled it's a violation of Charter rights to close safe injection sites or to have prostitution be illegal].) So aside from Canada's long uninterrupted democratic traditions making it beyond unlikely that anyone would set up an actual dictatorship, Harper has no need for one. He's got free rein for the next five years, and within that time he's hoping to move the Canadian political consensus to the right and make the Conservatives Canada's default governing party.

The most unpleasant thing we know of Harper so far is that there's a good chance the Conservative party was involved with robocalls during the election directing people in some riding to the wrong voting locations, or maybe saying the election was on a different day than it was. Well, we know that was done; we haven't definitively proven the Conservatives were behind it yet, though it's logical to suspect them. If he did, that's illegal and election tampering on a Nixonesque level.

Awwhhh, now there's no reason to annex Canada.

Elected dictatorship is pretty apt, actually. We had, what? Twelve years of chretien? Five minutes after he left we were crying and screaming for him to come back.

Majority government is like the Force. It isn't inherently evil, just real easy to misuse. And there's a disappointing lack of telekinetic strangulation.

I don't feel that Harper will be able to move the country to the right socially and will probably find it hard to move attitudes on economics. He can however start undercutting all of our social programs to the point that we don't have a choice. So long as the courts are strong and independent I'm not too scared. Slightly creeped out at the fact that we might honest to God get an NDP government next time round but not afraid.

edited 14th Apr '12 7:41:24 PM by Rationalinsanity

You know, Harper slightly freaks me out. It quite possibly could be what Britain would be like now, if our Conservatives had got an outright majority.

The Conservatives are blue, correct?

Are the Liberals yellow, like our Liberals, and the NDP red?

Liberals are red, NDP is orange. Bloc Quebecois (may they rest in peace.) is light blue.

Also, I have to say that NDP is running a solid advertising campaign right now. Getting positive exposure for their new leader (and teaching the country he actually exists) and ensuring the people that yes, they will try to hold Harper to account. ...This keeps up and I might have to vote for them next time. I've been holding onto the sinking ship that is the Liberal Party of Canada in the hopes that the Tories implode and the NDP can't hold Quebec... Neither of those seem to be happening and frankly the NDP are a lot more... sane than they used to be.

edited 14th Apr '12 8:02:26 PM by Rationalinsanity

Uh there. Fixed it for you. "Administrated by the EU"? Really?

Ah, thanks. I was unsure of what the context was with regards to the EEA/EFTA.

Well joining the various European arrangements is likely to net us benefits like exemption of European foreign moral policy, like the ban on seal imports. Usually, European countries hardly ban anything they do themselves, they just ban it for other people. So if we join up, that's really the only good reason. That and tariffs.

Harper has been trying to create economic links with Latin America and China instead of Europe, which is... well odd for someone as right-wing as he but it does make sense for Canadian right-wings. The Canadian left has typically been more supportive of democratic regimes, and had a quieter but still robust economic relationship with other less democratic nations (such as China), whereas the Right likes to be really loud yet does most of its treaties and negotiations with the worst despots in the world.

Chretien was pretty dictatorial but he ran the country well. That's the problem with the Canadian system. We get good dictatorial leadership under Liberals every decade, which leads to resentment in the population so they swing to the Tories who ruin our economy and then go back to the Liberals again. I mean is it any different? Under Harper Canada has only faced tougher times since the Great Depression.

The recession was because the US stock market crashed thanks to their housing crisis, and the US banks nearly followed it. I'd say Canada's in a better economic position than either the US or the EU - partly thanks to the quality of our banks, partly thanks to natural resource prices, and partly thanks to the fact that Harper actually took a Keynesian path and passed stimulus measures rather than going with right-wing economic orthodoxy.

The budget's in bad shape because of his pre-recession tax cuts, which were a fiscally irresponsible move, and he's being fiscally irresponsible in plenty of other ways as well (the F-35s and the crime bills in particular), but the economic situation is not primarily his fault.

I don't think Harper will be able to shift the national consensus on social issues very much, and he seems to sense that and prefer to shy away from them. His culture wars involve the issues of crime and guns; on abortion and gay marriage, he seems to realize that conservatives have lost, though he'll be getting pressure from the right wing of his party. But I'm worried that he is going to be able to pull off the right-wing trick of cutting taxes and then using lower revenues to justify reducing social programs. Canada's already got a problem with inequality and poverty, we don't need him making things worse.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/opinion/86531-smell-of-rotting-fish-coming-from-ottawa

Not sure if there are any other Atlantic Canadians here but this trend is just disturbing. That Harper will just use an industry that thousands of people depend as a bargaining chip with the EU is disgusting. Plus there's the part were the House of Commons voted down a treaty and he signed it in anyway. How is that shit allowed to get by? Why don't we hear about this?

...I am seriously starting to think that Harper is a just punishment for a population that has grown complacent.

There's no requirement for the House to vote on foreign treaties unfortunately.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/04/14/harper-summit-americas.html

As expected Harper's stance on the War on Drugs and anti-Cuban views have caused us to fail spectacularly at the Summit of the Americas meeting. There is a potential now for everyone but Canada/USA to be invited to the economic meetings in the future, and instead Cuba will be allowed in our places. That would be... ironic I suppose.

It really pains me to see him ignore fact-based policies with respect to crime and drugs, to the point where he is willing to alienate the entire South America just based on petty personal opinion.

As for what I meant about Harper and the current recession is that he managed it horribly. He managed it via politics.

• He cut taxes on businesses by a historically large amount based on absolutely nothing. Actually this was following previous Liberal policy taken to the nth degree, which I also disagreed with. Cutting business taxes has not spurred investment, and Stat Can has proven that.

• He cut sales tax despite everyone telling him not to do so. Those weren't partisan complaints, those were economists across the board from left wing (because they think the taxes are needed to pay for social programs) to right wing (because they think income tax should be cut as previous liberal leader Stephane Dion wanted). Now we're billions deeper in the hole because of it.

• He complicated the tax code by putting in various tax credits to buy votes. That costs us real dollars as people waste money on accountants to perform their now more complicated taxes. Just yesterday, the Canadian association of accountants actually complained that they were being paid too much to do taxes and the tax system was too complicated. The people who make money doing taxes think they are being paid too much to do this. Now that's telling.

• He's wasted most of his political capital fighting uphill battles on issues Canadians don't care about which costs us real dollars. As you pointed out, he's going to blow 10 billion, and likely up crime-related costs by billions per year. He's blowing 25 billion on F-35 jets, and heck that cost could go up. He wasted most of the stimulus plan (upwards to 30% of it) in nothing but ads for the conservative government, when it could have been spent developing real things. In 50 years, we won't have a clue he spent a dime of that money. He wasted time trying to fight the long gun registry and lost us our UN seat. He spent millions on a lawsuit against keeping the in-site injection sites open. Just recently he blew millions on trying to put someone in jail for baking pot cookies.

I know you're not disagreeing but I just wanted to list out his fiscal irresponsibility. If the Liberals were in power, we'd probably be hitting net zero on our budget or maybe just negative a few billion.

Oh look, as part of budget cuts, Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz announced today that he will be ending food inspections. Basically the cost is now downloaded to provinces if they want to pick up the tab. Apparently Ritz doesn't care about the listerorosis outbreak at the Maple Leaf plant a few years ago caused by lack of government inspections. Expecting corporations to do their due diligence is suicide.

edited 15th Apr '12 11:50:53 AM by breadloaf