Defenestrate Them All: Canadian Politics 2021

The CBC is out of control and in need of reform. I’ll slash funding for English TV and CBC News Network, and end funding for digital news. Focus should be on CBC Radio and Radio Canada.

Add your name: https://t.co/HA2lG4G59d pic.twitter.com/N3gTtP12fA

— Erin O'Toole (@erinotoole) February 14, 2020

promising to defund in February 2020, he's a visionary

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/canadian-campaign-for-afghan-peace-afghanistan-federal-election-humanitarian-crisis-1.6148969

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/covid19-vaccine-update-bc-1.6149947

serious business (or just a copy of quebec's policy, really)

Tory support rising: https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/poll-tracker/canada/

I'm actually leaning Liberal atm. Yasir Naqvi is replacing McKenna here; he's a former provincial Attorney General with some legitimate accomplishments - restrictions on police street checks and amendments to the Human Rights Code to include immigration status and social condition as prohibited grounds for discrimination happened during his tenure. The NDP picked an economist who struck me as fairly milquetoast and vague during the nomination race.

who usually wins your riding?

are the NDP going to be wiped out by strategic lib voting for the umpteenth time

There was a Beaverton article that said something like “Poll reveals that 100% of Liberal voters would vote NDP if they had a hope in hell of winning”

Sounds about right.

The CPC’s red tory turn has got a lot of people pivoting … which is, like, “have you ever actually lived under a conservative government?! Because it ALWAYS SUCKS.” I can’t believe how dumb we are. We deserve what we get.

It has been Catherine McKenna's (Liberal) riding for the last two terms, was an NDP seat for four terms before that between Paul Dewar and Ed Broadbent, and Mac Harb's Liberal seat for four terms before that. I've voted NDP in every federal election since 97 and am not that big on strategic voting. I actually like the Liberal candidate is the point (although I voted for the NDP's Joel Harden over him provincially in 2018 and have been glad for it.) The NDP can still win me back!

The NDP in our riding always use the selling point, "you don't have to vote for the Liberals to keep the PCs out, they will always come in third place here." It's safe enough that I usually vote Green.

am not that big on strategic voting

didn't mean to imply that you were. I was just complaining about strategic voters on fb who live in urban ridings where the tories have no chance anyway. a lot of canadians don't really understand how our system works.

This is interesting and a definite shift, considering how partisan Ford used to be: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-dont-campaign-for-erin-o-toole-doug-fords-office-tells-ministers/

starting to get a little nervous, polling is shifting to the Cons

ignore the polls, how have we not learned this by now

Yeah, they're m/l statistically tied now. The Tory strategy might have actually been correct: perhaps people are resentful of being asked to come out for an unnecessary early election when we're not fully out of the pandemic woods yet but are still happy with Liberal policy.

I think hardcore tory voters hate JT so much they don't care what OToole is promising, they just want to see the Libs fail. And if OToole can keep the open bigotry to an acceptable level that might be enough to win our beloved Ontario suburbs.

Really hoping for the 135 lib seats, 40 NDP seats outcome, so they'll actually need the NDP to govern. Dreading the 145 Tory seats, 27 BQ seats outcome. And those two results are both pretty conceivable now.

Ugh Tories pulling slightly ahead of Grits (statistically tied) on CBC poll tracker.

This election is grim, but the likeliest outcome - a reduced Liberal minority - is exactly what Trudeau and his team deserve. The increasing chances of a Tory/BQ alliance government is very depressing though.

why do you think so? pandemic response was pretty good

It was a questionable decision to have this election in the first place. A gamble. They look reckless. Then, it gives massive exposure to his opponents. Jagmeet and O'Toole, who so far is successfully playing his cards close to his chest, are now becoming much more familiar to voters - in both cases in a positive way. Trudeau himself is not a convincing spokesman (in my opinion anyway) and he is easily portrayed as weak, patronizing, etc. Both the right and left have immediate issues that are giving their bases tons of energy. Climate change, vaccines, Afghanistan. It has been a shitshow for the Liberals so far.

So Topham Guerin, the NZ-based PR firm that our Tories hired for this election (https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2021/05/22/want-to-win-stoke-voters-anger-excitement-pride-and-fear-say-the-conservatives-social-media-strategists.html), apparently specializes in creating intentionally low-quality memes that go viral in part bc of hate-sharing: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/oct/23/tories-hire-facebook-propaganda-pair-to-run-online-election-campaign . They've worked on winning campaigns for right-wing parties in Australia and the UK.

As per the 2019 Guardian piece on the UK Tories' successful campaign:

The pair’s arrival comes after their success helping Australia’s rightwing coalition unexpectedly win the country’s general election, where they were praised by local media for their understanding of how to fight online campaigns. Purposefully low-quality memes based around popular shows such as Game of Thrones were used in a bid to drive interactions – good or bad – at any cost, on the basis that this would boost the reach of future Facebook posts.

“We’d make them really basic and deliberately lame because they’d get shares and lift our reach; that made our reach for the harder political messages higher,” an anonymous individual told the Sydney Morning Herald, dubbing the strategy “boomer memes” as the content appealed to older audiences.

In recent days, the [ British ] Conservatives have begun purposefully posting badly-designed social media material, at one point urging MPs to back a Brexit deal using the often-derided Comic Sans font. The Tories’ political opponents lined up to mock the image, inadvertently sending it viral and ensuring it was seen by a wider audience.

Certainly explains the Wonka ad

Your (BC) Liberals:

https://www.citynews1130.com/2021/08/30/vancouver-liberal-taleeb-noormohamed-real-estate/

Last week, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau pledged to impose heavy taxation on those who flipped homes within a year of buying them.

Of the 42 home sales made by Noormohamed since 2005 reviewed by NEWS 1130, 21 would have qualified for the Liberal anti-flipping tax had it been in place.

That riding is probably going to go Conservative now. Great job, Liberals.

100% into a heavy tax for home flipping.

Your (BC) Liberals

is he actually a BC Liberal? The Liberal candidate in my riding was an aide to Christy Clark, so no thank you!

seeing bus stop ads for the PPC in downtown Vancouver today was disturbing

Might normally hesitate before sharing something like this but it's too believable in this case:

hey @ottawacity it sure seems like councilman @RickChiarelli is trying to take me on a vaguely sexual trip to Europe using state funds ??? pic.twitter.com/vjKXwsAfpP

— cass city (@HeavenlyGrandpa) September 2, 2021

So at least three women received similar messages. Chiarelli, who's already under investigation for sexual harassment, is saying his account was hacked:
https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/ottawa-councillor-denies-sending-inappropriate-messages-on-twitter-1.5571829

Maybe not impossible that his account was hacked while his staff were also sending out official business? Not really sure how that works.

Weird. It is possible though - my own Twitter account always began posting strange links in between my real postings. Despite changing passwords. Only thing that made it stop was to make the account not public. But if you’re going to hack and set someone up, that convo is kind of.. weak?

Yeah, don't know what to make of it. It seems weird that someone would hack an account to have that conversation but also seems weird that someone who wasn't hacked would do so - why this random comedienne in Chicago? Why just bring up the sexual harassment investigation in the conversation? Would a suburban city councillor even have the power to hire someone like that for a trip to Europe (on what business grounds?) and bill the city?

New Liberal attack ad - turning around O'Toole's "take Canada back" slogan seems like a good move, as is recalling how right-wing his ideas were before this election campaign.

We can’t let Erin O’Toole take Canada backward.

Now is the time to move forward. For everyone. pic.twitter.com/LkV3VzNQiM

— Liberal Party (@liberal_party) September 4, 2021

Wtf: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-protestors-gravel-1.6166378

Suspicious death in Truro NS being treated as homicide; possible hate crime
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/we-feel-very-unsafe-indian-canadians-in-shock-over-truro-killing-1.6166038

French debate tonight, English debate tomorrow

As initially reported by Radio-Canada:

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/book-burning-at-ontario-francophone-schools-as-gesture-of-reconciliation-denounced

From the Radio-Canada piece (https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1817537/livres-autochtones-bibliotheques-ecoles-tintin-asterix-ontario-canada), it seemed that scholarly books were even destroyed because they were not written by FN people, regardless of how accurate the information or how progressive the pov was. I can understand removing problem books from curricula but really can't get behind a mass book-burning on the part of a school board and library; O'Toole and Noël both OTM, sadly.

why is this event that took place in 2019 a story in 2021? why is it an election issue?

Aiui, Radio-Canada only learned of it now, though I'm not sure why since it doesn't seem that the school board tried to keep it a secret at all; on the contrary, they wanted people to know about it. The actions of a Catholic school board in Ontario are definitely not a federal election issue, though; I wasn't thinking of it that way.

yeah I find the framing in the NP story very weird...like there's not even an attempt to explain why this story is news

book burning is always going to be news, I just don't get why this wasn't news in 2019

Obv an attempt to gin up outrage over the “left” stifling free speech.

I received a big flyer in the mail from my conservative MP (incumbent and sadly not unseatable) with an eye-catching fear-inducing graphic saying “DON’T LET TRUDEAU CENSOR YOUR SPEECH”

ugh

Really disheartened by this whole election, it just seems hopeless on every front.

Like there is obv a huge RW info (disinfo) campaign that paints a Trudeau victory (and it’s always a Trudeau victory, not a Liberal one, capitalizing on people’s distaste for JT personally and ignoring the fact that powers in Canada is not concentrated in the executive) as a doomsday scenario. The number of comments I’ve seen on social media specifically using the word “doomed” makes me think it’s a targeted, coordinated effort.

right wing parties have been taking their fight online in a much more coordinated effort for a while now. identifying their targets and grooming them with escalating levels of misinformation has worked exceptionally well. i remember nick kouvalis bragging about astroturfing efforts helping to get rob ford elected and the entire "ontario/canada proud" groups being started by a conservative staffer, with dumptrucks of cash from developers. the centre/left parties haven't been nearly as effective at this. maybe they're running on the mistaken assumption that things like facts and compassion are more effective... i dunno. likely, they don't have nearly the amount of wealthy, dubious actors from around the world acting on their behalf.
i've seen a few, otherwise ok, people light-radicalized by these things lately. one previously nice-enough (maybe not the brightest) coworker comes to mind who just shares shit about how much she hates trudeau. no facts or rationales or anything. just pure, seething hatred. seemed totally out of the blue from the person i knew three years ago.

He is very dislikable for reasons that have nothing to do with how the right frame him.

Sure. But he hasnt done anything to warrant having rocks thrown at him.

He has grown on me tbh. I am actually a little baffled as to what it is that people hate.

He is very dislikable for reasons that have nothing to do with how the right frame him.

― everything, Wednesday, September 8, 2021 12:03 PM (thirty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this was my initial reaction. i don't keep up with ontario/liberal politics, but there are a lot of non-right wingers in vancouver that do not like trudeau at all. by the looks of it, the ones i know will vote ndp or green.

in my riding, the same liberal MP has won for decades. i have no idea why aside from people voting for the liberal party/federal libs. okay. i mean, sure. whatever happened to thinking locally? at any rate, she sounds like a despicable human being.

he's actually been better then i expected at doing his job (it was a low bar). but there were people at there frothing at the mouth about him long before he'd ever even had the chance to govern.