Canada General Discussion: Trudeau II

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JdM has the names. "Ainsi, les Québécois Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, Anne Minh-Thu Quach, Christine Moore et Robert Aubin ont laissé planer le doute sur leur avenir politique." Akin spoke to Boulerice, Dube, REB who all said they're running. Interestingly, Pierre Nantel, Singh's most outspoken caucus critic, isn't on the list.

It seems Mulcair was the third. 

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Also, as with Scheer, I'm not sure why everyone thinks the leadership is so disastrous. They're both facing a fairly popular  first term Liberal PM. One has to grade this on a curve and given the circumstances  I'd say they're both doing ok. They can always be turfed after an election loss.

He has shown a lack of leadership whenever the party was confronted with a thorny issue. Every time the media asks him a tough question, his handlers simply respond "no comment", thus allowing the media or even the Liberals to answer that question for him. No one has any idea what he stands for, other than some vague platitudes about a positive vision.

Finally, when Maxime Bernier quit, he revealed that the last time Scheer spoke to him was nine days earlier during their last caucus meeting. So Scheer made no effort to prevent an embarrassing split, and just let it happen, for a whole nine days???

And what's with the defeatist attitude about Trudeau and the next election? Even if it's an uphill battle, at the very least the Conservative Party could reduce the Liberals to a minority which would pave the way for a victory in the next vote. But as it stands, there's the real chance the Trudeau Liberals would win 200+ seats with just 37% of the national vote. Jean Chretien would be proud.

Andrew Scheer(stupidity) seems to make the same mistake over and over again of going for the immediate political gain while leaving himself open for longer term negatives.

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He hasn’t stepped in it over major issues? What? He got into a civil war with his caucus over abortion, feuds daily with a successful premier from a provincial arm of his party over pipelines, and was seen by some as being too earnest when it came to his strategy for dealing with allegations of abuse/harassment against members of his party.

I won’t rip him to shreds, but there’s no way he could be called a success. Not only has he been an ineffective and hollow spokesperson, but his decision to not immediately seek a seat has since proven to be a huge blunder. He has very little credibility among his own caucus, has not built important intra-party relationships, and has now accumulated such a stink of failure that there’s very little he can do to get out from under it even if he manages to do everything perfectly up to the election. It’s not fair, but it’s the reality. He had lots of chances.

So I maintain that the party made a huge mistake turfing and disrespecting Mulcair. He did not meet expectations in 2015, I’ll grant that. But people saw him and knew he was tough and capable. A bit of course correction for 2019 and he could have been the perfect counterpoint to Trudeau.

This seems quite a bit over the top.  I doubt most Canadians could even name Jagmeet Singh as head of the NDP yet alone know anything about any of these things.

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Doug Ford so far has been awesome

If you like people who believe that a democracy is a four year dictatorship.

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Please don't quote reply that troll. I have him on ignore, and I don't wish to see his trolling.

Sorry.

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Blue skying ideas here. With the Liberals meeting in Saskatchewan and the NDP presently in some disarray in Saskatchewan, I wonder if the Liberals will look at 'finessing' the carbon tax. 

1.Saskatchewan is presently the only province where the federal Liberals are the 3rd party: the NDP has managed to remain as the major opposition to the Conservatives in Saskatchewan.  If Ralph Goodale's riding is excluded, the Liberals received something like 17% of the vote in Saskatchewan in the 2015 election.

3.Saskatchewan has 6 (mostly) urban ridings (and the 1 Northern riding though that's a bit different) where the Liberals should be competitive based on the 2015 election results in other provinces and there are the 4 ridings in Alberta they won in the last election and some other ridings where they were competitive but did not win in Alberta, so this does not add up to an insignificant number of ridings.

4.Everybody with any sense knows that regulations to reduce carbon emissions are (much) more expensive than the imposition of a carbon tax, but since no Premier wants to be seen as being a climate denier, they do seem to be willing to apply regulations that would achieve roughly the amount of carbon reductions demanded by the federal government.

The problem here of course is that the Premiers are cowards who simply don't want to impose a direct tax on consumers.  However, since the Federal Liberals are politicians as well, they certainly shouldn't be above accomodating the Premiers in a way that achieves the maximum political gain for them as well.  Backing off the carbon tax might even provide a lifeline to Rachel Notley.

5.While I don't think it would be in the best interests of the Liberals to destroy the NDP, weakening them to the point where the major remaining supporters are Niki Ashton types I think would be the sweet spot for the Liberals. 

The Liberals could certainly use a foil on the left that (not to make too much of a strawman), for instance, argued based on the Chartalist economics view that 'government debt is the long run driver of economic growth', that Israel is the most evil nation in the world today and that even listening to African music is 'cultural appropriation' would certainly make the Liberals look dead centrist in comparison.

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And its People's Party

Will the party aim to run candidates outside of Quebec or is this just a Quebec only party?

All 338 ridings.

oof that's going to make it tough for the Conservatives to win. I could even see them taking a net loss in seats in 2015. I wonder though what % Peoples will take I imagine 8-10% (I don't think their is a huge market for a libertarian style party in Canada but will see.)

Also outside of Beauce what do you think the most likley seat Peoples would win?

According to Craig Oliver (about the only liberal national media commentator around) Maxime Bernier's party could do very well in and around Quebec City: right wing populist but pro free trade.

Based on that, there may be parts of Alberta where the Weekend at Bernier's Party could do well as well, but I don't know if Bernier could establish himself well enough in a year's time to win any seats in Alberta.

The analogy made by some with Preston Manning and the Reform Party regarding the 1988 election really does not hold water though.  The 1988 election ended up as a referendum on free trade and many Western conservatives held their noses to vote Progressive Conservative.  The leading western conservative publication at the time (Western Report or Alberta Report published by the noxious Byfield family) urged conservatives to hold their nose and vote Progressive Conservative.

Of course, byelections are easy to vote against a government with a solid majority, but I think it's fairly instructive that only a few months after the 1988 election, Deborah Gray won a landslide victory for the Reform Party in Alberta.

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Actually Rural Alberta is one area where Conservative support is so strong a split would be harmless as one of the two parties would win.  On the other hand could be bad news in Calgary and especially Edmonton if it gets any traction.  Whether it does or not is tough to say.  I tend to think it won't make much difference as most Conservatives hate Trudeau with a passion so the base will coalesce behind whichever party is most likely to defeat them.  Where things could get interesting is can he pull away some swing voters who dislike both the Liberals and Tories.  While much of that group is not libertarian per se, some might who find Liberals too left wing and Tories too right wing vote for him as a protest vote.

Also wondering if some Conservatives wish Trudeau kept his election promise on electoral reform as with PR a split would actually be in the Tories' benefit since whenever you merge two parties you never get the sum of both.  True it is unlikely they would get over 50% although if say Michael Chong split off and formed his own more moderate one it might be plausible of the three parties albeit still a stretch.

Yes. In referring to the late 80s with that though, I don't think strategic voting was as well understood, and so had Alberta Report/Western Report written something like 'these are the ridings where it's safe to vote Reform, but in these ridings you should stick to voting P.C', it probably would have been confusing.

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And its People's Party

Will the party aim to run candidates outside of Quebec or is this just a Quebec only party?

All 338 ridings.

oof that's going to make it tough for the Conservatives to win. I could even see them taking a net loss in seats in 2015. I wonder though what % Peoples will take I imagine 8-10% (I don't think their is a huge market for a libertarian style party in Canada but will see.)

Also outside of Beauce what do you think the most likley seat Peoples would win?

According to Craig Oliver (about the only liberal national media commentator around) Maxime Bernier's party could do very well in and around Quebec City: right wing populist but pro free trade.

Ralliement créditiste 2.0 ?

Weren't they extreme social conservatives though?  Bernier for all his 'too much diversity' is mainly a libertarian.  Bernier's non racist concerns over immigration might also play well in places where there are many non racists who are unhappy with the negative effects of large amounts of immigration: traffic jams, reduced public services...  So, he might have some popularity in the Lower Mainland and populist areas of Toronto like Scarborough, maybe some parts of the GTA as well.

In the case of the Lower Mainland there are a fair number of people who go to Point Roberts, Washington to pay lower prices for dairy products.  And this maybe compounded by the dislike of the monopoly taxi cartel here in British Columbia as well.

Again, I doubt it would be enough support to actually win a seat even with 4 or 5 way vote splits in the Lower Mainland anyway, don't know enough about Scarborough or the GTA.

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Sorry, why exactly is this a phenomenon? Is Andrew Scheer too, what, moderate? Surely not. Or just not an inspiring leader?

He's an airhead who can only speak about policy using meaningless right wing cliches.

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https://www.nationalnewswatch.com/2018/09/28/montreal-area-mp-nicola-di-iorio-mulling-political-future/#.W662iWhKiM-

But in a message on his Facebook page this week, the MP says he is giving himself another month to reflect on his future as well as to consult his loved ones and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

That message came after he told Le Progres de Saint-Leonard, a weekly newspaper in his neighbourhood, he would stay on until the end of his mandate in 2019.

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It's his hometown and there aren't any safer ones open. I'd have given Bennett an ambassadorship, maybe WHO rep, and given him St. Paul's.

Does WHO Rep matter?  Carolyn Bennett is flaky.

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Seems like the Liberals have backed down on the summer grant program attestation nonsense. 

Fairly obvious compromise: funding can no longer go to programs that are 'anti charter' i.e to a program funding anti abortion activities, but the organizations can continue these programs by themselves.  There will be no attestation either, but Service Canada civil servants will check out the grant seeking programs to ensure they don't violate the new rules.

Seems most people are happy with this. 

https://globalnews.ca/news/4732603/canada-summer-jobs-attestation-change/

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/11/canada-pipeline-indigenous-trudeau-treaty

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So what has been the reaction to this by the parties? Will this impact elections in B.C. Or nationally in 2019?

With the exception of the Greens, all of the parties are a party to this (sorry.)  I suppose even the Greens in B.C could be seen as supporting this if they don't pull out of their agreement with the NDP.

Speaking for myself, I don't care about these 'hereditary chiefs.'  There is a reason that the 'divine right of kings' was done away with, and this situation is no different.

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Harper goes on Prager U : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFWE2jl5mwA&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR2vlhsyxA3UGJJrG15E4f88L8CscC3QVIkDwywoM7Yz35uVQUchPPZFz0s

With most videos from Prager 'U', you end up knowing less facts than before you saw the video.

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Harper goes on Prager U : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFWE2jl5mwA&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR2vlhsyxA3UGJJrG15E4f88L8CscC3QVIkDwywoM7Yz35uVQUchPPZFz0s

With most videos from Prager 'U', you end up knowing less facts than before you saw the video.

Harper though almost always make a reasonable and intelligent point

I'm familiar with Harper's arguments because he wrote a book on it that had some discussion in the media. Even with some conservative leaning Canadian columnists (Andrew Coyne and Tristan Hopper at the National Post) the concept of the 'anywheres' was ridiculed.

Andrew Coyne: Stephen Harper comes across as banal in effort to claim mantle of populism
Harper’s book is largely an attempt to portray his own government, not as the cynical power-seeking machine it appeared to be, but as populist before its time.

I disagree in that Harper did market his government at the time as 'populist' but without using that word: a 'Tim Horton's conservative' and his signature tax cut was the reduction of the GST from 7% to 5% 

Canada has also benefited from our large resource economy: young people, not necessarily straight out of high school, but after maybe a 6 month certificate program can get a relatively well paying job in the oil patch or in mining.  For most other jobs, it's now almost impossible to get a high paying job roughly straight out of high school.

However, this does bring up the point.  The irony of Trump and the Congressional Republicans benefiting from the 'somewheres' revolt against the 'elites' is that it was Republican policies that led to the real elites (the 1% approximately) gaining a larger and larger share of national income.

I support free trade and oppose tariffs, but there was always a concern with a fallacy of composition/commons problem: each individual wealthy business owner benefited from taking nearly all of the gains from trade for themselves, but all together, they've poisoned the well a great deal for support of free trade.

Republican policies that enabled this include:
1.anti union policies like the so-called 'right to work.'
2.tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthy
3.rising tuition rates
4.Inadequate social programs in order to ensure that corporations have a pool of unemployed to keep wages depressed
5.Opposition to campaign finance reform

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Harper goes on Prager U : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFWE2jl5mwA&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR2vlhsyxA3UGJJrG15E4f88L8CscC3QVIkDwywoM7Yz35uVQUchPPZFz0s

With most videos from Prager 'U', you end up knowing less facts than before you saw the video.

Harper though almost always make a reasonable and intelligent point

I'm familiar with Harper's arguments because he wrote a book on it that had some discussion in the media. Even with some conservative leaning Canadian columnists (Andrew Coyne and Tristan Hopper at the National Post) the concept of the 'anywheres' was ridiculed.

Andrew Coyne: Stephen Harper comes across as banal in effort to claim mantle of populism
Harper’s book is largely an attempt to portray his own government, not as the cynical power-seeking machine it appeared to be, but as populist before its time.

I disagree in that Harper did market his government at the time as 'populist' but without using that word: a 'Tim Horton's conservative' and his signature tax cut was the reduction of the GST from 7% to 5%  

Canada has also benefited from our large resource economy: young people, not necessarily straight out of high school, but after maybe a 6 month certificate program can get a relatively well paying job in the oil patch or in mining.  For most other jobs, it's now almost impossible to get a high paying job roughly straight out of high school.

However, this does bring up the point.  The irony of Trump and the Congressional Republicans benefiting from the 'somewheres' revolt against the 'elites' is that it was Republican policies that led to the real elites (the 1% approximately) gaining a larger and larger share of national income.

I support free trade and oppose tariffs, but there was always a concern with a fallacy of composition/commons problem: each individual wealthy business owner benefited from taking nearly all of the gains from trade for themselves, but all together, they've poisoned the well a great deal for support of free trade.

Republican policies that enabled this include:
1.anti union policies like the so-called 'right to work.'
2.tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthy
3.rising tuition rates
4.Inadequate social programs in order to ensure that corporations have a pool of unemployed to keep wages depressed
5.Opposition to campaign finance reform

Harper did negotiate most of Canada's Free Trade Deals , and handled the 08 Recession better than America or Europe Did .

Canada had a better regulated banking system that wasn't all that involved with the buying of the bundled mortgages.  Canada also has more conservative (as opposed to Conservative) bankers due to not having the capital to invest in the expensive high risk/high reward projects.  That's what the mergers were all about.  Had the mergers gone ahead, the banking culture almost certainly would have changed.

Thanks Finance Minister Paul Martin!

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/top-business-stories/ban-on-bank-mergers-helped-canada-withstand-crash-imf-says/article4600686/

Stephen Harper supported the chartered bank mergers and other financial deregulation.  Had he been Prime Minister in the late 1990s, Canada almost certainly would have been as bad off as the United States and Europe.

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Speaking for myself, I don't care about these 'hereditary chiefs.'  There is a reason that the 'divine right of kings' was done away with, and this situation is no different.

I don't care about these "representatives" of a "community" who say it's their "native" "land." My government committed a lot of genocides  to get it - that means we can do whatever we want to it!

Really, this situation is no different? The bourgeois democratic revolutions of the 1700s-1800s are "no different" than settlers pillaging their way through unceded Wet'suwet'en land in 2019?

"Bourgeois democracy" yawn.  Sure thing, Stalin.

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Speaking for myself, I don't care about these 'hereditary chiefs.'  There is a reason that the 'divine right of kings' was done away with, and this situation is no different.

I don't care about these "representatives" of a "community" who say it's their "native" "land." My government committed a lot of genocides  to get it - that means we can do whatever we want to it!

Really, this situation is no different? The bourgeois democratic revolutions of the 1700s-1800s are "no different" than settlers pillaging their way through unceded Wet'suwet'en land in 2019?

"Bourgeois democracy" yawn.  Sure thing, Stalin.

?? Read a history book - it's what they were - the third estate led the revolutions (French, American, &c) that ended divine-right monarchies.

Sure, and then the franchise was steadily expanded and so were respect for human rights.  What gives these hereditary chiefs any authority and how are these unelected leaders any different than kings or even dictators?

The elected chiefs have all come to agreements with the company.  It's easy for these hereditary chiefs to oppose everything since they don't have to stand for election or accomplish anything.

Do you support divine right monarchies?  Do you think indigenous people support divine right monarchies or that they are any less likely to want a say in how their communities are run?

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Speaking for myself, I don't care about these 'hereditary chiefs.'  There is a reason that the 'divine right of kings' was done away with, and this situation is no different.

I don't care about these "representatives" of a "community" who say it's their "native" "land." My government committed a lot of genocides  to get it - that means we can do whatever we want to it!

Really, this situation is no different? The bourgeois democratic revolutions of the 1700s-1800s are "no different" than settlers pillaging their way through unceded Wet'suwet'en land in 2019?

"Bourgeois democracy" yawn.  Sure thing, Stalin.

?? Read a history book - it's what they were - the third estate led the revolutions (French, American, &c) that ended divine-right monarchies.

Sure, and then the franchise was steadily expanded and so were respect for human rights.  What gives these hereditary chiefs any authority and how are these unelected leaders any different than kings or even dictators?

The elected chiefs have all come to agreements with the company.  It's easy for these hereditary chiefs to oppose everything since they don't have to stand for election or accomplish anything.

Do you support divine right monarchies?  Do you think indigenous people support divine right monarchies or that they are any less likely to want a say in how their communities are run?

Not sure expansion of the franchise went alongside respect for human rights in a linear fashion! Many bumps in that road, I say that as a Jew...


Do you think the Wet'suwet'en are suffering under the yoke of dictators? Were the RCMP acting as liberators? C'mon bruh... saying traditional chiefs are dictators, when they're the ones who've got the barrels pointed at them...

Anyways, Most of your questions can be answered by this video.

Anyways

1.I don't know if the hereditary chiefs are considered to be dictators by the people they claim to represent or not since they don't have to face elections.

2.I don't know what the Supreme Court would say about hereditary chiefs these days. Since 1997 there has been a great deal of effort at reconciliation between indigenous peoples and British Columbia and the principle of representative elected band councils and chiefs seems to be generally accepted.  The indigenous people themselves also seem to clearly want elected representatives and not chiefs who claim some divine right.

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I really don't know why you keep calling hereditary chiefs "divine right" dude - it's just not what they are...I was an anthropology major - give me some credit here! (it's true that they're not elected in the "every four years, vote in a designated place" sense, but they're chosen through consensus at potlachs and can be recalled...)

hereditary chiefs have authority over unceded traditional land, court precedent (and UNDRIP!) points to consulting w/ hereditary chiefs as well as band councils, and Trudeau's government has stated they want to move to consulting w/ First Nations on a "nation-to-nation" basis - aside from all of this - a militarized response was clearly inappropriate and brings back bad memories of Lake Gustafson and Oka...

1.Hereditary chiefdom is passed down as an heir: just like a king.

http://fngovernance.org/resources_docs/TraditionalGovernance_Wetsuweten2.pdf

2."Militarized response" i.e maintaining the rule of law. This is a situation of hereditary chiefs claiming to speak on behalf of an area of land who are responsible to nobody and who have therefore have no incentive to negotiate or otherwise act responsibly.  

It has certainly been shown to not be the case that these hereditary chiefs speak on behalf of even the majority of the people on the land.  One thing mentioned in that link is the 'father clan' vs the 'mother clan' and how the 'father clan' is favored.  There was a Supreme Court decision just a few years ago striking down the preferential treatment given to children of the male member of indigenous tribes when an indigenous person marries a non native.

https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1467227680166/1467227697623

With obviously recognizing the gross mistreatment indigenous people have received, that does not negate that indigenous people are not above nepotism, sexism or obstructionism among other negative things and that these things are more likely to occur when you have hereditary chiefs who, in fact, are no different than divine right kings.