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

I keep forgetting because the other parties are so meek tbh

anyway I suspect canadian voters will be very resistant to major change rn

I would be and I'm one of the people who actually thinks WE is a big deal.

Honestly not sure what Blanchet is hoping for.

I mean, we probably won't be talking it about this a week from now.

― pomenitul, Saturday, July 11, 2020 10:05 PM (one month ago)

This hasn't aged well.

Blanchet is a shit-stirrer who is now in full-on gloating mode since his flawless victory over #metoo (he's gained like 7% in less than a month). Legault's enduring popularity and what I like to call the CAQisation des esprits – an increasingly greater penchant for nationalism sans the bona fide separatism – also paradoxically helps the Bloc by fostering us-vs-them-ism. (My optimism knows no bounds.)

Morneau out.

Yeah, wow. And hoping to lead the OECD??

My Montreal-West-residing sister says that QC schools are a big clusterfuck and is homeschooling her kids this fall (kids were going to go to a Marguerite Bourgeoys school board school in the fall). Any thoughts?

And something about he school boards being forcibly merged?

From what I gather, QC schools are being fully reopened and all students are expected to go and parents are taking the provincial govt to court as a result? Family on the other side of the river have an autistic son and are pretty anxious.

I became a citizen just to vote NDP. My brother similarly got a British passport to support Scottish independence, lol

The Commission scolaire Marguerite Bourgeoys was abolished earlier this year, no? Anyway, we're at less than 50 new cases per day now, so while I understand where the government is coming from, the obvious risk is that this will all have been for naught and the second wave will be even more brutal than the first.

the "Commission scolaire Marguerite Bourgeoys" was replaced by the "Centre de services Marguerite Bourgeoys". What this means in practice is not entirely clear to me (for now not much seems to have changed).

Anyway, I'm sending my kids to school in the fall. It's going to be obligatory masks for everyone 5th grade and higher and I am fairly confident that the school is going to do an ok job with sanitary measures. I'm not too worried for now, maybe I'll start panicking in November.

Freeland takes over Finance, Leblanc takes over Intergovernmental Affairs.

Promising, perhaps:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-politics-trudeau/canadas-trudeau-plans-sweeping-social-welfare-reform-sources-say-idUSKCN25F1C8

hopefully.

second lockdown is looming (here in BC anyway) and CERB runs out in October.

Interesting

New Tory leader to be announced in just over an hour. I didn't follow the race that much. This guy seems both a little scary and also like possibly the one who might win an election, just a (dark) hunch:
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/derek-sloans-final-argument-put-canada-first

I really think one of the other three is going to win. Do you mean he seems like he might win a federal election?

I don't think there are enough ridings in Canada that are receptive to a social conservative message for an extreme right-wing campaign to win an election (famous last words...)

Do you mean he seems like he might win a federal election?

This was what I meant, yeah. I was thinking that Sloan is young, comparatively handsome and charismatic, has a clearly distinct ideological stance that could fire up a base, and seems somewhat consistent with what is happening on the right around the world (although he actually seems more religious than Trump or Johnson). It was probably paranoia, though. Lewis is a bit of a wild card from my pov - I don't really know anything about her. I'm not really sure if there is a strong ideological difference between Mackay and O'Toole, going by their online platforms? Somewhat surprisingly, O'Toole seems to make much more of a point of being open to Quebec nationalism.

Also, Mackay's history doesn't scream "winner" to me and he and O'Toole just seem staid, although I said all the same things about Harper too.

I think MacKay wants to take the party in a more David Cameron direction, while still complaining incessantly about wokeness

second lockdown is looming (here in BC anyway) and CERB runs out in October.

― Temporary Erogenous Zone (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, August 19, 2020 5:29 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

i disagree about second lockdown. new cases per day are where they were in the late march/early april peak, but (i) the age distribution is skewed way younger so it's barely translated into icu beds, (ii) we have more testing capacity compare to then and the positivity rate is half what it was in march, (iii) we increased from 5-10 cases per day (which is probably unsustainably low for a place of our pop) to 60-80 cases per day a couple weeks ago but it's not increasing very fast, and BC CDC's contact tracing is very good and pretty huge. we'll see what happens when schools re-open but i'm pretty optimistic. i don't think Henry & co are going to go New Zealand on us and lockdown every time there is community spread

the CERB replacement programs seem pretty generous, from what i saw

ballot machine malfunctions, good stuff

wonder if Trudeau is gonna propose pharmacare and universal 5$/day daycare. would be tight if we went full Quebeckistan

you never see polls for these things, but it's gonna be mackay right?

I think it will be close, my sense is their base hates him

Xps. Good points floppy,maybe I'm being alarmist. My wife is a server and so I worry a lot about both the amount of strangers she is in close proximity to and also her restaurant shutting down lol.

As for the tories, their voting system is not popular vote but per ridings won right?

hope ur wife can stay safe jim!

O'Toole time

seems like a loser to me but wtf do I know about what Tories get excited by

This really is an Iowa caucus situation. @LeslynLewis won the popular vote in the second round but was third in the points pic.twitter.com/5izWoLkP4q

— ¡Nathan! (@thenathanfinn) August 24, 2020

As long as I am your leader, Quebec nationalists, like conservatives from all walks of life, will be welcome in our party.

https://erinotoole.ca/quebec-platform/

So, like I was saying, this seemed to me like the most distinctive thing about his online platform vs the other candidates'. This is actually a pretty long and comprehensive section of it. I think he might be hoping for a Mulroney-style union of angry Westerners and QC nationalists, although the obv differences are that Mulroney could speak French and came from QC.

is o'toole's French as bad as McKay's?

https://youtu.be/gmm7NKV0vTM?t=204

The face-offs between candidates are next-level.

wow, truly awful. I hope for the sake of francophones' ears and brains that he improves.

The bar is as low as it's ever been, but at least he's not that hard to follow?

Yeah, like Scheer (or maybe Chrétien or Bernier in English), he strikes me as OK on the level of comprehension and comprehensibility and is probably the least bad of the four, just a long way from Mulroney or anyone I could see nationalist Quebecers getting excited about.

Especially now that the Bloc is back in business and swiping votes from the Conservatives and NDP both.

lol

Je vais me tenir debout devant la clique du Plateau

— Erin O'Toole (@ErinOTooleMP) June 17, 2020

Haha what; what is the context for O'Toole needing to stand up to the hipsters (?) of the Plateau? Or was Laverdière mean to him or something?

No idea. I can easily picture Montreal being shorthand for godless black bloc commies with face tats and a feeble grasp of English among older Conservative crowds out West, but I doubt they've heard of the Plateau per se.

I'm sure "la clique du plateau" means nothing to most of Canada, but it's an attempt to get rural (and Quebec City) votes in Quebec. There's this whole thing about Montreal not being "real" Quebec.

That makes sense. Smart of him to go after the radio poubelle vote.

Well, yeah, he's obv targeting a RW franco Quebecois audience with that tweet; just seems like a bizarre angle to take for an anglophone from Ontario who I doubt has ever received much grief from QS or GYBE or whoever. (It would probably be a strange tweet even for a francophone from Ontario.) It does mean everyone is talking about O'Toole's attempt to court that vote, though, so idk maybe we need to watch out for buffoons in the social media age.xp

Statue of John A toppled and decapitated in Montreal.

same statue was previously decapitated (by separatists) in 1992; it has been vandalized at least four times in the past year

Macdonald and Montréal from our 2018 story. pic.twitter.com/Spi9run4kQ

— Les Perreaux (@perreaux) August 29, 2020