Dynasty, s3: Canadian Politics 2018

sund4r

i'm not sure if you are disingenuously overlooking the nuances of brown's argument

peterson has a lot of traits of the canadian archetype. not every facet of peterson's personality is a canadian archetype

brown is building an image of a canadian archetype that involves various conservatives, and this includes harper, it could easily include rob ford and doug ford jr.

canada's main economic resources inform our culture: it is an old school, conservative-style way of doing business because it comes from mining resources, where once stability is reached, a bourgeois is created that stays in power and itself creates a conservative culture (you can see it in shows like dragons' den vs shark tank)

i watch and read popular canadian news outlets and most of them sound conservative to me

liberals are conservative

and we had a staunchly conservative government before them

having said that, i think just like in vancouver, i'm going to wager that toronto and montreal have small but thriving pockets of free-thinkers that are mostly found in art and academic circles, but not outside of that -- as in, not in business or management

Yeah the centuries old mission to create a Canadian archetype is doomed.

Brown's argument doesn't seem particularly nuanced to me but tbf I'm unlikely to ever get on board with a piece that tries to argue a sweeping claim that "x is the default setting for the [ nationality][ gender]".

Except for people in the West Island let's be fair.

F#A#oo, I will give you that you seem to at least be attempting to make a more coherent argument than he does. The point about a resource economy is an interesting one. There is a nuanced argument to be made about the differences between Canadian and American conservatism owing to Canada's inheritance of British Toryism (including Red Toryism) and roots in United Empire Loyalism. More generally, the combination of a constitutional monarchy and Westminster Parliament with decentralized federalism, of American Loyalists and a virtually abandoned francophone colony, probably has produced a unique political culture but I don't think it breaks down to what Brown seems to be breaking it down to (and "more Petersons than Trudeaus" really needs more support, as VHS said). Our major print news outlets do all mostly tend to the right, except for the Toronto Star, mainly because of Postmedia's stranglehold on ownership. I don't think there's a sensible case to be made that, overall, Canada is a more right-wing country than the US (or most of the anglosphere) if that's what you're saying.

the thing about this, and why i'm so open to others' views, is that there is a very personal feel to this

meaning, i speak from my own, yet limited, experience, and i think brown does, as well

and while i actually would love to have the stats and numbers, i think because of the type of canadian identity that is exported and sold to the rest of the world (the nice, progressive canadian), those types of numbers are difficult to come by, so for all we know i may be full of it

the reason for this is like you say, there is a stranglehold and information is undoubtedly less accessible in canada than in the us (i would be surprised if you disagreed with me on this), because of the oligopoly and almost monopoly the government holds on a lot of industries

but i am a little paranoid and generally do not trust government to act in the best interest of canadians

so because of this, i look to voting trends, but ya, it's all good

ON debate off to a start. Some surprising enthusiasm for Horwath.

This is my first real exposure to Horvath. (Sorry--it takes an election to rouse me into paying attention.) First impression, very good. Ford, meanwhile, struggles to string together a few sentences.

Politicians never stay within the time limits during a debate--except Ford. They've got him programmed well: "They're gonna give you 45 seconds to answer, Dougie. Don't ever, ever, ever use more than 30 of them."

Is anyone else experiencing issues with the stream at http://toronto.citynews.ca/cityvote-the-debate/? Is it because I'm in the US?

"'Six Million Dollar Man,' Doug--just keep saying 'Six Million Dollar Man.'"

Ha, Horwath seems to be doing better than Wynne so far and is starting to persuade me. Ford makes no sense half the time and, depressingly, people still seem to favour him. Horwath's question, m/l, "be upfront, what are you going to cut?" was v good imo.

She framed it really well with the comparison to Harris and Hudak.

OTM

Man, he has trouble with this whole hand-motion/talking coordination.

Can't watch this right now but GO ANDREA FFS

Wow, the three post-mortem commentators all liked Horwath best.

Except for the guy talking now, who's saying Ford won because he didn't accidentally say he was going to kill every fourth new-born during his first 100 days. I take his point, but Horvath was far and away the best.

Yeah, I'm seriously considering voting NDP now. If so, it will be the first time since 1999 that I do so provincially, although I've voted NDP federally in every election since 1997.

do it! do it!

i mean, this is an ABF election

Well, the PCs won't win my riding, regardless. (I was going to say "Ottawa Centre will elect a Tory when Massachusetts votes for a Republican Presidential candidate" but, actually, the latter has happened more recently than the former.)

Oh National Post...

http://i1091.photobucket.com/albums/i389/cryptosicko/IMG_0996_zpsvkpcveat.jpg?t=1525717360

http://i1091.photobucket.com/albums/i389/cryptosicko/IMG_0996_zpsvkpcveat.jpg?t=1525717360

lol

trying to figure out which local trot is running the ONDP twitter

Chariot of the Proletariat 🔥🔥🔥 pic.twitter.com/xy9v0dnf8n

— Ontario NDP (@OntarioNDP) May 9, 2018

in other local developments, guess who's a fucking moron

Here’s the link https://t.co/uTNW9UaKug

— Jason Chapman (@_JasonChapman) May 9, 2018

why are they asking trump about ontario politics

Tbf, without context, it does seem like a bit of a condescending question. Had Ford just said or done something that suggested gross ignorance of basic Parliamentary procedure?

Known Quebec islamophobe on the cover of Urbania to celebrate their 15th anniversary! Supposedly that's the woke edition.

https://cdn.urbania.ca/media/2018/05/URBANIA_No47_15ans_C1-C4_Num47_v7_HR-425x545.jpg

https://urbania.ca/article/richard-martineau-martyr-quebecois

Comment interprètes-tu notre page couverture ?

Je suis une cible facile. Des fois, j’ai l’impression que pour rentrer dans une gang, t’es obligé de me lancer des flèches : « T’as fessé sur Martineau, tu peux faire partie du groupe, voici tes patchs… » Je représente plein d’affaires que les gens n’aiment pas, je fais un bon punching bag. Et à force de me faire rentrer dedans, je dis parfois de façon ironique que je suis un martyr pour la cause. Peut-être que je me complais dans le rôle de victime, à l’occasion.

;_; poor Dick Martineau.

Only in Quebec this type of stuff could happen without any sort of backlash.

Liberals are giving Texas oil company #KinderMorgan a blank cheque while dumping all the risks on Canadians

Rigged process, First Nations & local communities shut out, oil spill threats, science ignored & now billions on the line

It's clear this pipeline should not be built.

— Jagmeet Singh (@theJagmeetSingh) May 16, 2018

jagmeet comes out against the kinder morgan pipeline, which is great. id imagine he may be running in burnaby south as kennedy stewart will resign to run of mayor of Vancouver.

Oh, good for him.

NDP is well ahead of the Liberals in provincial polling. I might have to sign up to do some (uuuugh) canvassing.

*ON provincial polling, I should specify

can't we just nationalize the oil industry

no, because the whole point is to make tons of money for corporations, wreck the environment, employ paltry numbers of workers, and pay ultra-low royalties

providing any tangible social good is anathema to the extraction industry

I think natural resource rights are largely under provincial jurisdiction but I'd be for socializing the industry at that level.

I used to sometimes like to defend the NEP as a challop.

Abacus has Ontario PCs and NDP in a tie: http://onpulse.ca/blog/entering-the-long-weekend-the-pc-lead-evaporates-as-ndp-momentum-builds

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/horwath-ndp-visits-ottawa-first-time-campaign-1.4671224

Yeah, Joel Harden is a sessional at Carleton, which intrigues me a little.

In the wtf file, btw, this whole story: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/pc-doug-ford-stolen-data-allegations-1.4671063?cmp=rss

After reviewing the ONDP's platform document, I'm honestly pretty unconvinced that the modest tax increases they're proposing - on larger corporations, the top 1% of income earners, and non-resident housing speculators, with a tax freeze on the 'middle class' and a reduction in small business taxes - could pay for the vast spending increases they're also proposing in virtually every area. This is actually a main reason why I've not voted for the ONDP, for the most part. To his credit, Bernie Sanders has been pretty upfront that he would need to raise taxes pretty significantly, including on the middle class, to pay for his platform in the US. That said, if the NDP is the best anti-Ford option, they're the best anti-Ford option. I just don't know what the government would actually look like because I'm not sure it could look like this platform.

Better something you are not sure you could like than straight up something you are going to hate, not that you didn't made the point but let me reiterate.

I agree, but I also agree w/ Sund4r that the ONDP (and the NDP more generally) hedge their bets far too much in terms of policy and I continue to believe that's their greatest liability at the ballot box.

The "you don't have to pick btwn bad and worse" messaging is actually not bad, but I wish there was more distance between their policy planks and the Liberals' to help back up the rhetoric (not to say there are non - pharmacare ain't nothing)

Another poll - by Ipsos, usually a Tory-leaning pollster, I thought? - showing a PC/NDP tie in Ontario, including a tie in the 905 region (!): https://globalnews.ca/news/4222975/ontario-election-pcs-ndp-tied-ipsos-poll/ .

I still refuse to believe we're headed for anything but a PC minority

A PC minority would be a lot better than PC sweep/majority, which is what everyone was anticipating a couple of weeks ago!

An NDP-Lib coalition could possibly emerge in that scenario (?), which might be great but idk if it would work.