Because It's 2016: Canadian Politics in Sunnier Days

sorry, this is not related to canadian politics, but there is no thread for canadian expats in the usa (there aren't enough of us stateside to warrant a thread, i think?)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/us-election/canadian-expats-reflect-on-the-ugly-us-presidential-race/article32572248/

it was weird moving here and it has just gotten weirder. i've grown to like the us, but it's such a confusing 'relationship'

i thought i knew a lot about it from reading the news articles in canada, but living here really highlights all the nuances that make a huge difference

i am actually mailing my citizenship application either today or tomorrow

good luck with that! must be a long process.

Idk if the Liberal Party should really be considered the left but I'm not really convinced that the NDP is better or further left on most of those issues and am not sure I even know what they stand for at this point. I guess that's the other weird thing about Canadian politics: it really feels a bit like a one-party state atm, with an interim leader for the CPC and a lame-duck leader for the NDP.

― Spiritual Hat Minimalism (Sund4r), Saturday, October 29, 2016 7:00 PM (two days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i find it baffling that the tories and ndp haven't expedited leadership contests.

especially the ndp tbh. with the perception that he is a huge mega-loser for going from 1st in the polls to 3rd in the election literally everything he says is rendered ignorable and sort of pitiable, despite his reputation, deserved or not, for being a good debater in parliament.

thanks van horn street

i've read it takes no more than six months but we'll see

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/conservatives-yazidis-liberal-mccallum-1.3820299

more of this please.

I'm late but, yeah, that's kind of great to see.

Also jim OTM re Mulcair.

that's kind of great to see.

Aargh.

that's kind of great to see.

Kinda ridiculous that it will take another year for the NDP to elect a new leader.

For some reasons, I thought it was in May.

The Economist article suddenly seems a little less silly.

I'm so frustrated that only now, this morning, is Canadian news actually focusing on how Trump's protectionist policies on trade and climate change might affect us. Anecdotal evidence, but it's seemed to me that people here have been evaluating him as if they live in America, even the racists and dumbasses don't seem to get that to HIM we are THEM.

Seems like we are chosen to be holding the liberal democracy fort for a while now.

https://www.thestar.com/news/world/uselection/2016/11/09/how-trumps-win-will-affect-canada.html

the environmental stuff is especially enraging for me.

Trudeau's congratulation statement was pretty bad

Jesse Brown ‏@JesseBrown 49m49 minutes ago
You didn't do *anything* so stfu that you are #proudtobecanadian

had a nightmare that bc was a russian oblast

climate policy will be pretty negatively affected i would say

keystone xl is not popular in bc (have some friends who are in favour of it though), so this will be another long fight

nafta is the most interesting, because canada actually stands to gain something from it

thing about nafta: trump talks about renegotiating it or scrapping it entirely but international treaties while chiefly undertaken on the president's behest and negotiated by him have to be confirmed by the senate, surely the senate republicans aren't going to go against free trade? (shouldn't assume anything i suppose)

that's my thinking but ya i guess everything's up in the air right now

I still can't understand why all the Mexicans came to the USA if all the jobs went to Mexico

Duh, to rape.

Reagan's famous shining city upon a hill is now...Hamilton?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-trump-visit-canada-1.3845013

I'm happy with this. To hell with my lofty urban principles. I don't want the canadian economy to suffer more than it should have.

at least they agree on keystone xl

Ugh: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/11/09/trumps-win-an-exciting-message-thats-needed-in-canada-kellie-leitch-says.html

the environmental stuff is especially enraging for me.

not sure that trying to out-harper harper on xenophobia is going to do her many favours

also kellie leith is p much the definition of an elite

Khristinn Kellie Leitch PC OOnt MP, orthopaedic surgeon, former think tank chair

more dangerous than Leitch is that the lots of Quebec nationalists are very much into the Trump/LePen rhetoric and think this is the key to having their own country.

after Tuesday, I'm 100% certain it could happen.

Yeah. I'm feeling very much like I need to get more engaged with Canadian politics after this.

ha

let quebec proceed with seceding and we'll cut them off of everything the rest of canada has but what they want even after seceding. if they want it, they get taxed and exporting to them is treated like all other foreign countries. their main trading partner is the us so they can negotiate something with trump. ha! would love to see that. they won't survive a day

young quebecers are not particularly stoked on independence in general to?and the main goals of the sovereignty movement - protect french, put francophones in power - have been accomplished. yes I'm sure there will be, as there already is, white nationalist movements in quebec, but i wouldn't really worry about it, at all, as something that will gain prominence or get anywhere near power or mainstream influence

The PQ and BQ already had that element but idk, is there really much appetite for separatism in Quebec? Both parties have been routed in their respective elections. Quebec has what might its most federalist provincial government in ages and, on the federal level, came back to the Trudeaus' party for the first time in three decades.
xp!

I guess the worry is that they have to vote Liberals out at some point and we don't want the PQ to become more Trump/LePen-like?

ha

let quebec proceed with seceding and we'll cut them off of everything the rest of canada has but what they want even after seceding. if they want it, they get taxed and exporting to them is treated like all other foreign countries. their main trading partner is the us so they can negotiate something with trump. ha! would love to see that. they won't survive a day

― F♯ A♯ (∞), Thursday, November 10, 2016 12:47 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah having two lost generations of fellow citizens is certainly worth the laugh....

I guess the worry is that they have to vote Liberals out at some point and we don't want the PQ to become more Trump/LePen-like?

― Spiritual Hat Minimalism (Sund4r), Thursday, November 10, 2016 12:54 PM (eighteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes exactly. so far there is no viable alternative between an increasingly xenophobic party and a corrupted to the core one.

speaking sarcastically there

quebec seceding will never happen but it's pretty upsetting when it comes up

in a world in which Donald Trump is president, Quebec can secede.

i'm open to reading literature that demonstrates quebec can *successfully* secede, if you've got them

you just need a successful referendum for the situation to devolved into a massive shit storm for everyone involved. but go ahead, take things for granted, I decided never to do it again.

comparing a secession to electing trump is comparing apples and oranges

*successful* was the keyword up there

i appreciate the cautionary tone, but i googled "can quebec successfully secede from canada"

here are some simply practical problems for quebec seceding:

https://www.quora.com/Why-doesnt-Canada-let-Quebec-secede

the last two referenda, quebecers have preferred to stay, and last i heard (maybe a few years ago admittedly) i haven't heard any strong desire for another referendum. but let's say they did choose to, the rest of canada would have to be willing to negotiate such a secession. your view is of a city crumbling in chaos suddenly, which i guess could happen theoretically, and sure, we should never take a united canada for granted, but i don't see a secession happening any time soon. and there would be symptoms of it coming to fruition, which i like to believe the rest of us would disseminate, if ever it reached that point

i haven't heard any strong desire for another referendum. but let's say they did choose to, the rest of canada would have to be willing to negotiate such a secession.

I mean, it's mostly an academic question at this point, but I think we'd do that, unless you'd be willing to send troops to Quebec.

sure, but i just can't get my head around how they would solve the other practical issues. especially as brexit has shown how deeply complex it is and, as someone said in the quora link, crimea

anything is possible,

good luck splitting montreal in half in a berlin-during-the-cold-war fashion tho. but yeah, there is limited desire for quebec sovereignty right now let's freak out about the real shit coming down the pipe - as uncertain as the nature of that shit is.

The question on the Quora page was pretty dumb, as pointed out by subsequent comments, and a lot of those 'practical' issues don't seem insurmountable to me. The national debt question is the only one I would take especially seriously. The question about the divisibility of Quebec, and FN treaties, seem most serious to me. Otherwise, banks and TV networks are private institutions anyway; presumably Radio-Canada would separate from the Ceeb. Connecting the two remaining halves of Canada would be pretty manageable: mainland Americans manage to make it to Alaska and vice versa. Issues about citizenship rules or where to locate customs posts are the sorts of things any new country has to handle, and they usually manage to figure those things out. Obviously, if Quebec became independent, it would set its own immigration rules. A new Quebec government would have no obligation to employ former Canadian civil servants as Quebec civil servants but they might well be the right people for the job.

"What about the roughly 1 million French speaking people in Canada who don't live in Quebec, and the roughly 1 million English speaking people who do"

The national debt question is the only one I would take especially seriously. The question about the divisibility of Quebec, and FN treaties, seem most serious to me.

Uh, to clarify this, the latter issues, about whether Quebec would also be divisible, especially given unceded FN land, or land that was ceded under treaties to the Crown, are the most serious issues imo, but they are not even touched on in the first response.

http://www.dailyxtra.com/canada/news-and-ideas/news/us-customs-block-canadian-man-reading-scruff-profile-215531

this is scary because the type of jokes people make with friends privately (through text eg) could probably be misconstrued

Anyone else follow that Tony Clement radio tantrum? And he's still at it on his facebook and twitter. RIDICULOUS.

been talking to a lot of people who are thinknig of doing exactly that, myself included -- gotta look up if i can join the ndp after to try to elect an actual progressive there too

So afaict, the NDP doesn't let you hold another party's membership as well as theirs. At this point, I'm leaning towards thinking that the Tory leadership might matter more than the NDP leadership. I am wondering if voting for Mulcair as NDP leader in 2011 and Chong as Tory leader in 2017 means I'm really a closet Liberal.

19-yeare-old closet case is youngest ever MPP

there really should be a minimum age requirement

i mean they should increase it

I disagree, actually. I thought it was great when the NDP got a bunch of undergrads into the House in 2011 and would like to see more participation by young adults.

There's something to be said for life experiences

Young adults can be more ideologically imo

They can, although I was probably less ideological as a young adult than I was either as a teenager or as an older adult. (Actually, I voted PC when I was 18 in 1997! Weird transitional period after my anarcho-communist adolescent days.) Clearly, Canadian young adults in general are not even ideologically driven enough to show up on Election Day, for the most part, so I'm not really concerned about the thread of radicalization. 18-25 year olds are adults in the eyes of the law, vote, pay taxes, are often responsible for their own bills (I was when I was 20), generally either work or are part of the post-secondary system, so I think it is fair for them to be involved in government, and I think they have a perspective to offer.

it's not an issue i lose sleep over

i never voted conservative in any of its forms eg (unless you're including the liberals)

my lowest point was voting for the communist party when i was 19 or 20 (chalk it up to dumb things you believe when you're a naive university student)

Reform was the hard-right option in '97. Charest's PC were practically a centrist option to the Liberals (who were probably at their furthest right, economically) and I thought their foreign policy was more principled (although I can't remember what it was).

I'd sooner reduce the voting age than raise it.

same

Blah, sorry, brainfart. I don't know why I thought we were talking about voting ages rather than age eligible to run.

https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/vbbvqj/conservatives-finally-ditching-the-rebel-have-a-lot-to-answer-for

rats leaving the sinking ship over at the rebel.

legit concerned by the preponderance of MAGA chud types on canadian social media and below the line contributions at newspapers. these "mainstream" conservative voices only now deciding to distance themselves from such a vile and extreme publication shows the current state of canadian conservatism, the real depths it will sink to, and the almost imperceptibly infinitesimal distance between tories and the alt-right

i'd rather they distance themselves a little too late than outright embrace it like south of the border.

that being said, i remain extremely pessimistic as to how Quebec nationalist parties will distance themselves from the increasingly racist and xenophobic sections of the population.

it might surprise you to learn some of the most important figures in quebec nationalism are pretty fuckin outspoken on this issue:
http://plus.lapresse.ca/screens/e9020f7c-0021-4659-a972-e2908ac6db6b%7C_0.html

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/jean-francois-lisee-racism-immigration-burqas-1.3785382

though "systemic racism" aside, of course lisée's still on his party's fuckin anti-burqa tip

i still think there is a large degree of separation between PQ/Lisée/Drainville and organisations like Atalante Québec and lol La Fédération des Québécois de Souche (Federation of pure-bred Québécois, kid you not). i don't think the PQ are as openly xenophobic as those proper french alt-right organisations, nor do they live in the same sphere of politics. the same way John McCain and the american alt-right are not exactly the same battle. the question now is how influent one will try to be on the other in the coming elections, because yeah, PQ will use the white nationalism card for sure.

I c&p-ed the discussion to the 2017 thread: Canadian Politics 2017: I've Got a Pipeline Straight to the Heart of You

thanks sund4r!

My union joins in:

http://nationalpost.com/news/canada/ontario-elementary-teachers-union-calls-for-renaming-john-a-macdonald-schools

I used to supply at one of the (what I take to be many) Sir John A.s occasionally.

Moved it to the 2017 thread:

Canadian Politics 2017: I've Got a Pipeline Straight to the Heart of You