Canadian Politics

Loyalty police?

Well, environmental groups poised against the expansion of the pipelines from the oil sands, particularly the Keystone XL project, also the project that is to put a pipeline from the oil sands to the BC coastline, and also another pipeline project by Enbridge to send crude from the oil sands to oil refineries in Ontario... they've been slapped with a senate committee investigation. The Tories have openly accused the environmental groups of "working against Canada for foreign powers and are suspected of money laundering". They are now stripping them of charitable status and probably will have the RCMP start arresting people on terrorism charges in the future.

I could see them screwing those groups over on their status but until arrests actually start occurring that line of thought is the same kind of blatant fearmongering that Harper uses.

Because charging them with made up money laundering charges don't lead to jail time as is?

A more likely possibility: the Conservatives just keep stonewalling until everyone forgets.

Yeah that seems more likely. People need to raise shit about this.

Well the thing is that I really don't like the idea of "this is just fearmongering".

With Chretien, he did a few prorogations and slammed through legislation and has some party whipping, but because he used it in a limited manner and mostly for really good stuff, people didn't mind. Before that was Mulroney's massive corruption. Before that was Trudeau's use of martial law in peace time.

This IS a slippery slope if you look at the last 40 years of Canadian politics. It's gotten so bad now that we've Harper and he's rigging elections. What's Canada going to be like in 20-30 years?

I agree but the arrests I was talking about were about the Environmental groups.

I'd think that everyone's too afraid of a "Tianmen Square" outcome to do ANYTHING these days.

I would say it's more that Canadians are so used to living in a well working democracy that there are no existing mechanisms for protesting in this manner.

"No existing mechanisms"? Uh, wasn't the entire reason that Adbusters came up with the Occupy thing was to find a legal way to protest unfairness in this world? No, I'd say they're afraid of the possibility of failure, which of course would lead to a "Shaggy Dog" Story outcome.

Well the occupy protests completely failed in Canada for one thing so probably there is a fear of failure there.

But I was speaking more of the psychology of the Canadian populace. There's no motivation for protesting, there's no real forums or talkboards to go to that political activists can use to rally up hundreds of thousands of Canadians to protest. In fact, most protesting in Canada is regarded with a suspicious eye. We riot more over hockey than we do the devaluation of our political rights.

I mean, protesting in Canada just plain sucks.

Tamils protested in Toronto over Canada's inaction over human rights abuses in the Sri Lanka civil war and it was met with scorn and a lot of "go back to your own country". We simply dismissed their claims that there was widespread death going on. Now? Well, it seems there was and continues to be, death camps in Sri Lanka for Tamils. We continue to do nothing and the Tamil community has already given up on protesting as a means of getting a message out there.

• Failed: I think the reason was that we perceived it as "yet another loud minority". It's going the way of the Canadian apathy of the holocaust. Also, not Godwin's law, because there are literally death camps in Sri Lanka.

Occupy Canada tried to protest against banks, but as our media was so busy talking about how bad it was in other countries, they failed to mention how our banks were also hit by writedowns because they seemed relatively better than everyone else. So there was this silly perception that our banks came out stronger. No, they came out weaker and as we are seeing right now with the numbers being wrenched out of the hands of the secretive Harper regime, we gave them bailouts to the tune of $110 billion. Although, a lot of it was in debt-securitization, that's still BS (ie. it didn't cost taxpayers $110 billion to do it).

• Failed: People still have jobs and they still earn money. Sure it's not good, but not bad enough for Canadians to do anything other than simply just take it up the ass.

And when I look at the election rigging? Too many tories who just blindly throw their trust into a political party, a light-touch media, people who become suspicious of news that is "too critical" of a single party and thinks that spells bias, the inability to organise large groups of Canadians into protests because most people don't listen to politically-active channels (on twitter, on forums or on facebook) and most importantly and damning an expectation that the problem will fix itself without additional effort.

Tch...so predictable... It's always racism and relocation of attention here.

Also, is there a topic for appropriate discussion on the "funny clowns" in downtown Toronto?

http://metronews.ca/news/ottawa/213358/government-to-make-masks-illegal-at-riots/

While I can see the value in punishing masked rioters... this is probably also aimed at peaceful demonstrations that get declared unlawful retroactively. God I hope this pisses Anonymous off.

Arrrrrgh... I'll admit, the Black Bloc precautions are more or less necessary, but is it REALLY necessary to group them up with regular protestors? It's like comparing Occupy to the Vancouver Hockey Riots. A few dumbasses does NOT make it necessary to brutally maul and give life sentences to everyone in the G20 Protests.

Also, did anyone understand what I meant by "funny downtown clowns"?

Sorry to double post, but why is no one responding like they do usually?

Stuff came up.

I haven't heard of these clowns to which you refer, please elaborate.

Here's a hint: They're fat, they're ugly, they're stupid, AND they're greater municipal.

Ahh, the Super Fordio Bros.

Yyyyyyep. Stupid morons, stonewalling the Star, almost eating one of their reporters, thinking they're more powerful than Hudak or Mc Guinty, calling slow-process liposuction a diet, etc, etc, etc.

Anyways, is there a specific topic about Toronto, or is it just fine to complain about anything to do with Canada here?

There is no specific topic about Toronto so I don't see why you can't complain about our municipal politics here, although I like to avoid perpetuating the stereotype that Torontonians believe we're the most important city in Canada. I mean it's true, but the rest of Canada gets kind of annoyed when we point it out.

LOL And we ARE the most important, humour aside. We're the closest thing to Ottawa that the Feds give a damn about (Montreal being in Quebec, after all...), so their entire strategy is to impress US, and screw over everything else, especially the pure lawless tundra that is the territories.

Also, I hear that Harper is calling anyone protesting the Bush strategy of selling oil to China as terrorism.

Impress us? Who gives a shit about Toronto? We're the province's cash cow. Toronto gets back so little of what it pays in taxes it's ridiculous.

In some what happier news; all the charges against Occupy protesters here in Halifax were dropped.