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

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"

The “you only live upstairs, shut up about the main floor fire” take is a bad one though.

So Don Plett, the conservatives senate leader, a vocal trump boot licker; co-signed a bill banning international travel and then fucked off to Mexico.

Halton Police Chief in Florida rn too.

I don't trust this pollster that much but this is crazy: https://www.westernstandardonline.com/2021/01/exclusive-new-poll-shows-ucp-collapse-as-ndp-wildrose-surge/

That’s awesome. Still a long way out from the next election tho. Kennedy’s been terrible tho, and I don’t see him turning his act around.

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)

By all means, feel free to raise them! As the person who usually starts these threads, I don't see it as an inherently bad thing at all that we get more moderate (in quantity and tone) traffic but I don't discourage more discussion. Not intentionally in any case.

We dont have the leftist vs liberal arguments in here because the left is irrelevant here

Hm, not sure if I agree. The NDP actually holds the balance of power federally (and has pressed the Liberals to do certain things over the last while) and governs one province currently. There are charismatic and highly talked-about leftist figures in US politics but I don't see that they hold more power.

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

I'm guessing this is referring to something on another thread but fwiw I generally don't. In practice, I'm not sure that they're actually applied that repressively, for the most part.

Yeah, had the NDP not held the balance of power, not sure CERB would have been this generous and Trudeau being much much more aggressive on the carbon tax.

And Trudeau's deficit spending policies is much much closer to what the progressives have been advocating for than anything Pelosi/Obama/Clinton has put in place over the last twenty years.

I am always bummed to hear stuff like 'the left is irrelevant here' because obviously a lot of left wing actors across Canada is doing essential work and have had important victories. There is a reason abortion is not as threatened as in the US, there is a reason we have single payer health care. If you look on a more local level, there is a reason tuition in Quebec is extremely affordable, why we have more unions. Those victories came from leftists that are mostly still alive and those gains have been kept by leftists today. Or should I say: if you keep saying it is irrelevant, then maybe it will be?

What I can't stand anymore is leftist Canadian friends being activists for Sanders or The Squad and can't barely name the leftists MPP and MP in their own provinces, even less their battles and accomplishments, while there is so much work to be done here still. I am seeing that increasingly and it tires me.

Abortion not being threatened is just normality in an advanced capitalist first world country in the global north. America is the aberration. The liberals economic policies are Freeland's policies, don't think the NDP have much to do with it. And the unions are extremely weak, as I know from being a union activist

CERB extension and federal sick leave were NDP conditions iirc?: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/jagmeet-singh-justin-trudeau-minority-covid-pandemic-1.5745386

Ime, having lived a lot in both countries, unions are much stronger in Canada than the US. Is that in question? The Fraser Institute certainly thinks it's the case: https://www.fraserinstitute.org/article/difference-between-labour-and-unions-us-and-canada

that article is some real bullshit lol

of course we are ahead of america in so many things. a big plank for their left-wing, which liberals like biden oppose and won't enact, is medicare for all. our status quo = their unattainable dream. the US has "right to work" laws all over the place, we don't have them in any province iirc. so yes, unions are stronger (or less weak). i wouldn't trust a fraser institute report though.

i think im speaking in a quite ilx-centric manner. bernie wasnot particularly close in either of these democratic primaries. so it's not that the left is powerful there and that's what causes the debate to be stronger, far from it. but there is a strong amount of political disputation between the left and liberals in the US on things like medicare for all, with divides liberals and the left, which just does not seem that relevant in canada/this thread about canadian politics on ilx.

The Fraser institute is the fucker with the gasoline when a RW policy wonk has a match he needs something to do with.

xpost The NDP is not the entire leftist apparatus in the nation. I would count your union work in it and as actively revelant.

Oh, the Fraser Institute is obv hard-right on economics and can be full of shit at times, although I think they're right on the facts re rates of unionization and right-to-work legislation. I just find their takes fascinatingly bizarro, like to read the opposite spin on those facts.

yeah the facts in the article are presumably correct and every value judgement is wrong

Speaking of cross-border relations being mostly a one-way street, yesterday Twitter banned several 'high-profile' accounts owned by Québécois conspiracy theorists of all stripes: QAnoners, covidiots, anti-vaxxers, etc., starting with this asshole:

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/quebec-qanon-conspiracy-theorist-alexis-cossette-trudel-banned-from-twitter-1.5260210

It just gets worse: 3127 new cases today in QC. We'd never hit 3000 before.

Ontario was over 4,000 yesterday (~3,300 today). St. Marys, where I am, went from 8 cases before Christmas--all long since resolved--to 20 in two weeks. This piece echoes my own feeling, that a lot of this is tied in with the more transmissible new variant, which is probably out there in large unreported numbers.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/uk-variant-dominant-strain-ontario-february-1.5866296

At least Ford is keeping schools closed. Perhaps Legault will have no choice but to back-pedal.

As always, it's also worth keeping in mind that Ontario's population is currently 14.57 million, whereas Quebec's is 8.85 million, so proportionally you guys are doing… fine-ish. Approximately 1,500 of our new cases are in Montreal – that's like 500 more than Toronto. Anyway, it all goes to show how ineffective the CAQ has been on this front.

Yeah, percentage-wise, a big difference. I was doing the same math with active cases in St. Marys, and even though we're doing better than Toronto, we're suddenly not doing all that much better.

Tbf when comparing apples and oranges, percentages are only useful up to a point. I mean, San Marino currently has the highest number of deaths per 100k pop, and Lichtenstein holds the #6 spot…

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

ya, i wouldn't use "fine" to describe Ontario. we seemed fine in the late summer/fall and then the numbers started getting, what i would consider, out of hand again.
i had a trip up to a cottage that was planned over a month ago and i might have to cancel now and i am actually having a hard time coping. been stuck in my house for almost a year.

I said fine-ish... proportionally. I agree that things aren’t looking great on your side of the border either.

im sure legault/CAQ are responsible to some degree, but i think a lot of the reason it’s so bad in quebec relative to any other province is because of individual behavior (and maybe factors like a particularly cold and humid climate). aside from the maritimes Quebec’s policies were as strict as any other province. you could say they botched the rollout and timing, but like compared to alberta which was laissez-faire and had way lower cases, it’s clear that can only explain so much

What does ‘individual behaviour’ mean here, exactly? Rowdy Latins vs stuffy Angles and Saxons? If so, England would like a word with you.

The fact that it first blew up here is definitely a factor, as was pointed out upthread. But there are limits to that explanation over nearly a year.

What are the health care and LTC systems like, comparatively?

Problematic “individual behaviour” is stuff like people just thinking it won’t happen to them, so they visit friends, share cars, etc. I know people still letting their kids have sleepovers!

Not meaning to speak for flopson, but that’s how id interpret it

But is that likely to be more widespread in QC than other provinces?

Anglos serious francos pas sérieux amirite?

imo the real problem is that none of us have any idea

The way Quebec's health establishment has used Haitian and African first wave immigrants as crash test dummies, the way they are going to force homeless people out of shelters by 9h30 despite imposing a 8pm curfew... they are just so many non-sensical blunders, if you add an absolutely terrible elder health care, the poor numbers are inevitable. I don't know how other provinces compare, I haven't paid attention to their restrictions and actions, but I am not surprised we have the results we do here.

absolutely terrible elder health care

This is a huge one, and all successive governments are to blame. My understanding is that Ontario is also quite lacking in this department, but doubtless not to the same extent. I haven't looked into the exact details, however.

On an unrelated note, the spelling error in the official alert we just received is vmic for our dumbass government.

(Franchement Pom, la seule raison pourquoi c'est parce qu'on a beaucoup trop de français mais je sais pas si les gens ici seraient prêt a l'entendre sans y voir quelque chose de plus sinistre)

lol, blague à part, les Français dans mon entourage (ma femme y compris) sont parmi ceux qui prennent ça le plus au sérieux depuis le début de la pandémie. Mais là je te parle de ceux qui habitent ici – en France même, c'est une toute autre histoire et elle est pas mal plus exaspérante…

Good news for me though: according to the English version only citizens are under curfew

If on top of that you don't live in the city, you're 100% golden.