Canadian Politics

From what I hear, it's basically a non-issue. Trudeau was being an idiot. And he's not a frothing racist like some others (read through this thread, you'll see whom).

When the Conservatives aren't looking so good, literal far-Right idiots trying to contest, a crippled NDP - the Liberals still look like they have a shot.

Much as I detest the idea, it's probably going to be Trudeau again.

EDIT: Pagetopper without context. Again. Y U do this, forum?

Edited by TechPriest90 on Sep 22nd 2019 at 5:06:02 AM

I hold the secrets of the machine.

I suspect that most of the serious stuff comes down to it happening so often that Trudeau doesn’t know how often he wore blackface, like that’s really bad, it wasn’t a one time incident, it was a reoccurring habit during his younger years.

It doesn’t technically change the political reality of his policies, but dam, when the best candidate to help minorities is the guy who has blacked up more times then he can count, that’s a really bad statement about ones country.

Edited by Silasw on Sep 22nd 2019 at 9:58:20 AM

"And the Bunny nails it!" ~ Gabrael "If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we." ~ Cyran

I have to wonder if the Liberals should have rammed their electoral reform though. Yes, it would have given smaller parties a better shot, but none of the parties agreed on what to do, suggesting that unilateral action would be the only option. And the Liberals would benefit from most proposed reforms more than any other party, so they'd be accused (not entire without cause) of election rigging.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Apparently the Castro is Justin Trudeau's father thing is from Alt-Right weirdos I think Castro was more friends with his father, which is something people don't want to get into to much, but like the man was Trudeau Senior's pallbearer, it has some issues, with the whole former PM was friends with a dictator but there you go.Maybe his mom liked him to but yeah.

The blackface thing isn't great, the Conservatives are worse, and the People's Party exists. I kind of wish they didn't so we could address the Trudeau thing more, but it's not the word we live in.

I'm a little late on the coalition discussion, but was an actual attempt at one between the Liberals, NDP, and the Bloc in 2008, back when Harper had a minority. I remembered it as being a bit of a PR disaster at the time (Harper and some of his ministers labelled it 'undemocratic'), but it turns out that the public response was pretty mixed. and the coalition government was never formed, but the threat did get the Conservatives to make changes to their proposed budget.

Additionally, several candidates from other parties have recently faced criticism for past racist or homophobic comments they made in Parliament or on social media. The spin the Conservatives in particular have been trying to put on the incident is "Trudeau judged our candidates for their past actions, he's a hypocrite," while their leader Scheer said before the blackface pictures came out that he wouldn't judge candidates for past actions if they apologized. It's hypocrisy all the way down.
Canadians have always been more racist than we like to pretend that we are, is it too much to hope that this incident might get us to take a serious look at how we conduct ourselves and talk about our history? Probably not, but I can only hope.
This is sort of how I'm starting to feel about it, to be honest. Doesn't help that in Ontario we've had a year of Doug Ford, so a lot people are not feeling particularly charitable towards the Conservatives right now (at the federal level they've been trying to distance themselves from Ford in the lead up to the election, we'll see how well that works pretty soon).

Edited by Pseudopartition on Sep 25th 2019 at 11:34:15 AM

If there's anything that's undemocratic, it's the idea that a single party with about a third of the vote should feel entitled to form a government on its own.

Seriously, the notion of a Conservative government, by all democratic logic, shouldn't even be a vague possibility right now. Three liberal, left-leaning parties — the Liberals, NDP and Greens — have about two thirds of the vote between them judging by the polls. The fact that the Conservatives might form a single-party government based on what promises to be a scant few percents' lead over their closest competitor while being overwhelmingly opposed by nearly everyone else... well, I guess it's just further proof that the English-speaking world seems to collect all the world's shittiest electoral systems.

Edited by DrDougsh on Sep 25th 2019 at 12:02:18 PM

Conservative leader Andrew Scheer has dual Canadian-American citizenship, through his American father. He is in the process of renouncing his American citizenship.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/scheer-has-american-citizenship-1.5307986

Now, this normally wouldn't be an issue, though hiding it is an odd look. Except, the Tories (including Scheer himself) have gone after political rivals (former Liberal leaders Dion and Ignatieff, and former NDP leader Mulcair) for the same thing.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

I'm just going to post this here without preamble, since words fail me.

Why Alberta Wants to Secede.

My brain froze reading that article, mostly because of how completely out of left field the damn thing is. I'd have called it an Onion Article, except that the BBC seems to be in a case of being a cat having a fit in a platter of tomatoes.

I hold the secrets of the machine.

Alberta can cry a fucking river; their patriotism is binary. If the PM is Conservative they are all in for Canada, accusing dissenters of treason. But if the PM is Liberal, they start screaming about separatism.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Alberta being Alberta I guess. Not surprised — it is Ted Cruz’s spawning ground after all.

Edited by M84 on Oct 4th 2019 at 8:59:12 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised

Texas North has always been an apt description.

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Oh, I've heard of Alberta Seperation a few times. Often enough that I know it exists as an opinion, but I can't say I've seen significant evidence of an actual movement being likely. Of course, that could be me travelling in similar circles, so I won't claim to be an expert on what the province is feeling.

Don't take life too seriously. It's only a temporary situation.

I hope the US won't take them if they secede. We have enough problems as it is.

I despise hypocrisy, unless of course it is my own.

I have to applaud the logic that seceding would somehow fix their pipeline problems.

I recall reading once that equalization payments aren't even based on provincial income, but personal income, meaning saying 'Alberta pays more' is just indicating we have more wealthy individuals, and thus aren't the bogeyman the province thinks they are. Though I will admit I haven't actually looked this up, so I don't know the truth either way. Should really do so.

Don't take life too seriously. It's only a temporary situation.

I mean it's weird like the Federal Government took their side for the pipeline thing. Also they complain less when the equalization payments go to them.

Most Albertans believe they have never been on the receiving end of equalization payments, that we have always paid out, and never got any back. Though I know some take this to the belief that every province other than Canada is a jobless wasteland full of unemployment and poverty, and that Alberta is the only reason Canada has an economy.

Don't take life too seriously. It's only a temporary situation.

Equalization payments are based on a provincial government’s ability to generate revenue (i.e., if all provinces had similar tax rates, what would their revenues be?). It ensures that we don’t have some provinces with drastically lower standards of health, education, and social support due to being unable to fund those systems.

Alberta has a lot of rich people (and taxes them very little), giving them an ability to generate revenue that is much higher than their actual revenue. Alberta also has a lot of natural resource revenue, which is accounted for in the calculation of “ability to generate provincial govt revenue”.

Edited by Galadriel on Oct 6th 2019 at 5:35:04 AM

I mostly hang around Albertans who are devastated by Jason Kenney getting in.

I get why they’re salty about the pipeline thing - having barriers placed in the way of exporting their principal resource when they’re in an economic downturn has got to feel like kicking them while they’re down - even though I think BC has good reasons for its decisions.

But it’s not like becoming a foreign country would do anything but make it more difficult for them to export oil. And climate change is likely to hand them another dustbowl, so in the long run continuing with an oil-based economy isn’t in their best interests.

On the topic of Kenney, ugh. I’m deeply disturbed that we now have xenophobes in power in Ontario, Quebec, and Alberta (and, after this election, quite possibly federally). It’s geting far too much like the US for my liking.

(In addition to xenophobia being morally repugnant and contrary to Canada’s values, we are looking at a demographic time bomb in the next 10-15 years as the rest of the boomers retire. Currently, about 18% of the population are seniors. By 2031, 23% will be seniors - the same as Italy has now. While the demographic challenge is partially relieved by people working longer, we will desperately need more workers. The only way we can get them in that time frame is through immigration, which the Liberals have kept high. If the Conservatives get in and cut immigration, they will destroy our economy’s ability to cope with this demographic shift.)

Edited by Galadriel on Oct 6th 2019 at 6:35:18 AM

Yeah I mean of course we aren't immune to the rise of xenophobia, but it's terrifying to see it happen here. With how much it is spreading.

Is anybody else getting a ton of Conservative political ads on this site?

Edited by phantom1 on Oct 19th 2019 at 6:49:59 AM

I haven’t seen any.

Really unsure about how this election will turn out. The NDP’s rise has been heartening and I’m glad Canadians like Jagmeet now that they are getting to know him.

Conservatives and Liberals seem to be in a dead heat at 30-33% each. Still, I’m worried because Conservative voters (older) turn out to vote more reliably; also, the polls in Canada can be way off (see: BC elections) and Grenier (on the CBC website) has been wrong before, so they may be understating Scheer’s support. Scheer’s campaign strategy has been habitual and blatant lying, as per the Harper model, and I really don’t want him to win.

Best-case scenario is a Liberal minority backed by the NDP. Most tumultuous (and pretty unlikely) scenario is a Liberal government backed by NDP where either Elizabeth May or Jody Wilson-Raybould holds the balance of power.

Edited by Galadriel on Oct 19th 2019 at 10:12:16 AM

Scheer just got hit with a last minute scandal, he got caught hiring "consultants" (re: spin doctors) to attack (at least) the PPC.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/project-cactus-maxime-bernier-1.5327555

He won't deny or confirm if the story is true, but the evidence is there.

The NDP looks set up to hold the line, they'll get wiped out in Quebec but should make it up elsewhere.

My election prediction is a Liberal minority (which the NDP or even the Bloc will reign in but support for at least a bit, because no one wants back to back elections). If the polls are off, you could see a weak Tory minority, but the entire Opposition would be up against them, and a Liberal-NDP coalition would not be out of the question.

Edited by Rationalinsanity on Oct 19th 2019 at 11:56:46 AM

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.

Yes, it’s hard to see how a Conservative minority could govern when their policies have nothing in common with any other party. Harper managed it, but that was because the Liberals were so shellshocked by their defeats that they backed him.

Re: Kinsella, that just doesn’t make much sense to me. Kinsella’s a longtime and big-time backer of the Liberal Party; the Conservatives working with his firm doesn’t add up. But Scheer’s comments make him sound guilty.

Edited by Galadriel on Oct 19th 2019 at 11:20:44 AM