We Still Have a Government, Right?: Canadian Politics 2020

It’s the high schools I’m complaining about!

It's an almost impossible call. But--my bias conceded--if you give teachers some vaccine priority (not the front of the line by any means, but midway, at least), it becomes much easier.

I’m not a parent so take what I’m about to say with a grain of salt but I think the lockdown would be more effective if there were fewer exceptions. As it stands, we are still implementing half-measures that will call for further lockdowns in the near rather than distant future, which feels shortsighted, including from a psychopedagogical perspective. I very much agree with Rima Elkouri’s take: https://lp.ca/zO4URa

Schools out in Ontario till Jan. 25.

https://www.cp24.com/news/elementary-school-students-in-southern-ontario-won-t-return-to-classrooms-until-jan-25-1.5257418

Can’t remember if I’ve posted this before, but it seems especially relevant ATM. A School of Public Policy paper on authoritarian populism in Canada: https://bit.ly/2XrT82p

only 32 cases of the flu in canada between april and december 2020

This seems 100% responsible and can not possibly end badly

https://www.conservative.ca/cpc/election-rigging/

hire a goddamn proofreader you idiots

Are Tories really disappointed that electoral reform didn't pan out? What promises do they feel Trudeau has deceived us on?

No, they are not. They get their ideas from below and try to fit them into situations up here in often nonsensical ways

Well that disappeared quickly

Wait, was there originally something at that link? I thought it was just a gag.

Btw, I realize you probably meant they get their ideas from the US but I'm going to continue imagining that "from below" meant that Tories get their ideas from Hell.

See the original URL. Something about new rules for pre-election spending and claims of "election rigging" by the LPC. Clearly NOGL this week

*NAGL

that 404 message is a great example of how they blame Justin Trudeau for their own fuckups

that 404 is especially hilarious in context

If anyone's curious...
https://web.archive.org/web/20210108164145/https://www.conservative.ca/cpc/election-rigging/

Wow, that’s just pathetic.

Btw, I realize you probably meant they get their ideas from the US but I'm going to continue imagining that "from below" meant that Tories get their ideas from Hell.

I'd like to appeal to my fellow Canadians to see if we can get the number of new answers on this thread from the current 71 up to 3666, to compete with the US politics thread.

Can we target1/10 of their posts, just to rep by pop?

I'd be happy with just having Canadians post as much in this thread as they do in that thread

Past few days I’ve seen a LOT of “that couldn’t happen here” in CanPol social media. The “election rigging” page (apparently a forgotten artifact from 2018, ginned up from this little nothingburger: https://fb.watch/2Usjw5HT0y) is a concrete reminder that the CPC is nothing more than an arm of the global conservative movement, organized and funded by the IDU, the same people that brought you such hits as Trump! Bolsonaro! and Borexit! not to mention such fan-favourite deep cuts as The United Conservative Party of Alberta! and the “Take Back City Hall” gang that’s poisoning your next municipal election!

BUT WAIT

THERE’S MORE

Does the IDU fund political parties? Also o_O that parties like the BJP are part of a "global alliance of the centre-right" chaired by Stephen Harper.

I do worry about our next municipal election. Centre-left, developer-friendly but mostly OK Jim Watson has been mayor for the last 11 years, and for 3 before that, and usually faces little serious opposition, but light rail has been such a mind-boggling disaster that it's like he's been begging for someone to take the job off his hands.

that CPC allegation of election rigging is sickening.

I'd like to appeal to my fellow Canadians to see if we can get the number of new answers on this thread from the current 71 up to 3666, to compete with the US politics thread.

― Halfway there but for you, Friday, January 8, 2021 3:33 PM (two hours ago)

Is there some sort of grant program involved here or...?

Btw, I realize you probably meant they get their ideas from the US but I'm going to continue imagining that "from below" meant that Tories get their ideas from Hell.

lmao

I was definitely lazy about the IDU connection & their role, need to do more research, but the picture that’s coming together in my head (which I must test before spouting off about it on SM lest I look like more of an idiot than I actually am) is of an org that funnels money into getting cons elected wherever & however it can. Public face: centre-right. Private face: jackboots & dark money.

Looking forward to The Right Honourable Jordan Peterson.

So in Montreal there's a curfew at 8pm but also homeless shelters have to kick out all the users by 9h30.

But yes after what happened on the Capitol I kinda decided that for my mental health it would be better if I just focused on my own country.

Yeah, I’m trying to maintain focus in the right order (I think: provincial, municipal, federal, USA, global?) but the US election & aftermath have way too many repercussions here — and are too frankly riveting — to ignore.

I did have a good couple months attending NDP volunteer orientation, delivering lit for the progressive municipal candidate in my ward, writing letters to my asshole MLA etc & have been almost successfully keeping it local on Twitter, but the coup de twats in DC shook it up a bit

coup de twats is excelsior

Clem do you support canadian hate speech regulations? On paper they're much stricter than the first amendment protections in the US?

(doing my part to get the numbers up)

No-one's getting flag-posted in this thread!

we rely on the americans to keep us safe from bad posters

I thought I was making a straightforward point, and I thought I included all the necessary pre-emptive qualifications so as not to anger anyone. Evidently not. I'd have to look into those regulations symsymsym...as I said, I'm conflicted, which is another way of saying I don't have the answer.

Sitting in Canada and hand-wringing encouraged in this thread!

post count in the canadian politics threads are always low because the conversations here all sound very stuffy

it looks like people fear to say something that goes against others' opinions so as to avoid confrontation

all very canadian, good on us, let's pat each other's back

(there are lots of serious canadian issues making headlines but they're rarely ever talked about here)

Have almost stopped posting in there not to piss them off. Think my "calling it a coup is silly, if it was terrorism then you'd have to
concede that the CHOP was terrorism" take that I considered posting yesterday would've gone down a treat.

Jagmeet's idea that the proud boys should be listed as a terror organisation, while not ridiculous on the face of it, is annoyingly US-centric to me. If they were a terror organisation in Canada they were a week ago,and so are the Sons of Odin,or would they need to do something in the states to be worth bothering with?

Everything about Canadian politics inspires lethargy. We have a mediocre sensible centrist government which it is hard to get too mad about for most (many are content with it),and the fact that the NDP are such a longshot third place means that theres no hope for any change - the only change will be when the tories win one of the next federal elections. Trump next door has had many just feeling happy to not have it so bad. We dont have the leftist vs liberal arguments in here because the left is irrelevant here

it looks like people fear to say something that goes against others' opinions so as to avoid confrontation

Maybe it's because our respective stances don't differ all that much in the end and we're aware of it?

I probably have some more franco/QC-centric takes on certain topics than some of you, but it feels irrelevant in the grand scheme of Canuck ILX.

The recurrent opinion I think I disagree with the most is that Canada is ultimately just as awful as the US or some variation thereof. But I see value in it regardless, which is a Canadian reflex maybe, idk.

xp and the lethargy, yes, our political scene hibernates all year, or very nearly.

is it just because the proud boys were invented by a canadian (like basketball)

We're not sending our best, that's for sure.

I think if the leader of my country had been inciting hatred continuously for four years, and I was living next to people who's brains had been poisoned by said incitement, I wouldn't have much patience for philosophical debates about whether his tool for dispatching hate should be taken away from him

I don't know how effective our hate speech laws are, they may function as a deterrent for the Fred Phelps of the world. The National Post was still able to publish raw islamophobia for most of this century.

I still worry that they could be used to squelch leftist ideas, as in this amazing Alberta provision: "Alberta's Human Rights Act forbids discrimination upon the common grounds except for political opinion, but also on account of "source of income"."

I assume that means you can be jailed for saying "tarsands"