Canadian Election 2019

[136or142]

Anybody else think Justin Trudeau is insane?  

He didn't realize the Aladdin costume was racist?  Look at the incredible attention to detail.  He not only knew it was racist, he wore it because it was racist.  He wanted to be the center of attention.  I don't think he's just an extreme narcissist though, I've come to the conclusion that Justin Trudeau's reality is play acting through life.

Amazingly, I don't know if this is disqualifying though for a Prime Minister.  From what I've read, Mackenzie King was also quite insane and he was Prime Minister for around 22 years.

I always thought that of him, although didn't Reagan mention all politicians are actors.  Still I think Liberals made a big mistake in choosing him.  Marc Garneau probably would have not built the excitement Trudeau did, but if he was PM, would probably have a 10 point lead and be coasting to a second term.  Off course maybe Mulcair would have won instead as 2015 was more about getting rid of Harper vs. electing anyone.  If Mulcair won, I think if party stood behind him, he would be in good shape for re-election, but problem is much of the party felt he wasn't left wing enough so if he saw a drop like Trudeau, party would have knifed him in an instant and put in a more left wing leader.  Trudeau is safe as majority of Liberal MPs wouldn't be MPs if it wasn't for him.

I think the difference is Reagan took on roles to sell policy: the angry citizen, the concerned citizen, the sympathetic citizen, Trudeau seems to take policy positions to fit a role: the modern sensitive male.  From what we've read, he acts nothing like that in private.  

Of course, I don't know but I suspect he acts in private like how he thinks a Prime Minister should.

The actor Peter Sellers once said about himself something like that his personality was whatever acting job he had at the time.

[136or142]

After the bidding war of campaign promises reached, to me, an absurd level of unreality, I'm seriously thinking of spoiling my ballot.  Anybody else considering doing that?

Just as a couple examples

Elizabeth May 'The Liberals say they'll plant 2 billion trees, we'll plant 10 billion trees!'

According to economist Kevin Milligan's calculations, the Conservatives total campaign spending promises and tax cuts amount to only $4 billion less per year for the term than the Liberal campaign spending promises and tax cuts.  So, that's roughly $70 billion in new spending compared to the Liberals $80 billion.  

However, the Conservatives also promises to balance the budget in the '5th year.'  Other than cutting foreign aid by 25% which is a drop in the bucket on $70 billion, the Conservatives have not stated what they'll cut.  They are implicitly running on Doug Ford's 'no problem finding efficiencies' lie.  (Or they're lying that they can balance the budget in 'the 5th year.')

The NDP meanwhile is making easy promises of solving problems knowing it will not get elected and have to actually do that.  And especially the sleazy rage filled Charlie Angus is calling out the Liberals for not living up to the false easy promises the NDP are making.

And Justin Trudeau is simply insane.  

I think this is easily the worst Canadian election in my lifetime.  Expressing a vote of no confidence in this campaign and in the leaders by spoiling my ballot is making more and more sense to me.

[136or142]

Big news in Ontario, CUPE and Ontario government have reached a deal so that means no strike on Monday.  Probably a relief to Scheer as while may not help him, a strike almost certainly would have hurt him and with his horrible showing in the French debate, Quebec is lost for the Tories, so they can ill afford to perform poorly in Ontario as well.

The Conservatives should win most of Quebec City and area.

[136or142]

Scheer had a great performance  and was the winner tonight

Unfortunately most people won't know this, but the debate showed what a cynical, dishonest sleazebag Andrew Scheer is.  

Liar Scheer claimed he could balance the budget, cut taxes and increase spending all by eliminating corporate subsidies and by cutting foreign aid by 25%.

Polls have repeatedly shown that Canadians believe government foreign aid spending is 10 times higher than it actually is.  The actual amount of government spending on foreign aid was $6.1 billion in 2018.  

Scheer knows that Canadians think it's about $60 billion.  So, he knows that Canadians think he'll but about $15 billion in foreign aid spending when he'll actually only cut $1.5 billion (if he even has a serious proposal to do that.)

Andrew Scheer is thoroughly contemptible.  I'm not surprised American Republicans like him.

[136or142]

At this point I'm leaning to voting Liberal just to own the cons.

[136or142]

Singh looks great. Such a shame that the NDP never polls well enough pre-election for NDP supporters to feel like actually voting NDP at the ballot box isn't a waste of a vote in many of the ridings.

Yeah tactical voting looks like it'll squeeze the NDP again. It's tragic how they lost in 2015, I wish Mulcair had won that election and the NDP was the major party of the left.

My riding is strictly red or blue most of the time, but in that 2015 election it was really looking like the NDP had a shot. I will sadly be tactical voting myself this time, against Scheer's Conservatives. In my riding the best way to.do so is to vote Liberal. The stakes are too high with the climate crisis for me to spend my vote virtue signalling that I support the NDP in a riding where they will not win (this time).

If the polls start massively shifting away from Trudeau and towards Singh, I will vote NDP. It looks like that won't be happening though.

You do realize, your vote isn't going to be the deciding vote in this election, right?

Tactical voting on the level of the individual makes no logical sense.

(1) You have no idea which riding I am in or just how close the polls or results will be between Scheer and Trudeau in my riding. You DON'T KNOW one vote won't count. Ignorant post.

(2) If you haven't figured out, there are likely hundreds or maybe even a thousand plus people in my riding with politics like mine making these same calculations. If we all vote strategically or if none of us vote strategically, it can have a big impact in my riding. Your "one vote doesn't count" argument is a flawed way of thinking. If all of us took your advice and just voted for our preferred party regardless of the situation, we alone as a group could cause a Conservative MP for this riding. Which could be the one MP needed to put Scheer over 50%, or the one MP the Liberal-NDP coalition needed to exceed 50% but now they need to negotiate with the Greens as well to form a government.

(1) Doesn't matter what riding you live in. The chance that your vote will be the deciding vote is negligible. You'd have a better chance getting in a car accident on you way to vote. I've studied elections for a long time. I can count on one hand how many elections have been decided by one vote at all levels of government.

(2) An individual vote is an individual vote. A group of people does not equal a monolithic vote group.

If people like you did vote for who they really wanted instead of stopping who they didn't want, the Liberals would tack left to try and get your votes. If you just vote for them anyway, they don't have to make that shift electorally. If no one votes NDP or Green, then there's no incentive for the Liberals to tack left at all.

And I get it, if everyone like you voted their conscience, maybe the Tories would win. Perhaps that would make for a good punishment for Trudeau for abandoning his electoral reform promise. If he went ahead with his promise, we wouldn't be having this argument.

If you can feel comfortable voting for the Liberals, then that's your prerogative. But do not delude yourself in believing you will have the deciding vote. I can guarantee that will not be the case.

The relationship many progressives have with the Liberals borders on a protection racket. They have single handedly eliminated the one policy that would allow for a progressive alternative to the Liberals and Tories, and then have the chutzpah to play up fear of a Tory government if progressives don't forgive their myriad of sins against progressive politics.

Thus, we see progressives voting for Justin the Blackface Pipeline Mogul to defend against Tory racism or climate inaction or something. It's surreal. I genuinely pity the NDP/Greens and their supporters for having to put up with this nonsense.

To misquote Andrew Scheer, I don't think a progressive has any lessons to learn from a person who votes for the Conservative Party.

[136or142]

I'm not quite sure how to ask this question, but what is the minimum percentage of the vote a party could realistically receive and still win a majority?  Especially with there being 5-6 major political parties.

For instance, Labor in the U.K in 2005 won 35.2% of the vote but won a comfortable majority of 366 of 646 seats. I don't know that anybody expected that to happen.

[136or142]

  I wonder how the typical pro Quebec independence voter feels about lots of immigration coming into Quebec? If they are really serious about achieving a seperate country with its own french speaking heritage, cultural identity etc does the globalization of the population help that goal?

They hate it, at least the politicians they vote for.  Most Quebec separatists politicians are 'pure lain.'

The French term pure laine, literally meaning pure wool (and often translated as dyed-in-the-wool), refers to those whose ancestry is exclusively French-Canadian. (It probably relates to the raising of sheep for wool, which was common in rural Quebec of the 1700s.)[1][2] Some definitions are more specific, indicating those whose families arrived in Canada during a specific period, with a lineage that is 100 per cent derived from New France (1534 to 1763) settlers.[3]

I find it hard to believe the voters are significantly different than the politicians they vote for.

The one exception for some of them may be immigrants who grew up in former French colonies.  Since they speak French, they might be regarded as acceptable.  Of course, Quebec French is not exactly French in France and I don't know if many Quebecers feel a kinship for France or its former colonies anyway.

[136or142]

I haven’t been following the campaign too closely but why is the Bloc doing so well now?

Good debate performance, and the Libs sliding in general. So their support might be a bit of a temporary bump, one that results in an underpreformance come election day.

Also, running as 'only there to defend Quebec's interests' seems to be popular for many as opposed to voting for a national party.  This seems to be especially true regarding Bill C-21 and the environment.  The Liberals are offside on Bill C-21 and 'they bought a pipeline', The Conservatives are offside on the environment, the NDP leader Jagmeet Singh wears a turban and, I guess, the Green Party just didn't catch on.

A National Post article mentioned that the B.Q is also running making Alberta into the new Quebec enemy now that separatism/federalism has declined.  I don't know if that is really is a big issue in Quebec, but I thought the article would be a hatchet job on Quebers, but it pointed out that Jason Kenney and the UCP stoked the fires on this initially be bashing Quebec interests over equalization, the Energy East Pipeline and dealing with climate change/global warming.  

(I personally feel that the Energy East Pipeline is in Quebec's interests, but that's neither here nor there.  The majority of the people of Quebec clearly don't agree.)

[136or142]

I wonder if the NDP can sustain their growth beyond a solid 20% this election..

I think we'll see whether the poor NDP organization before the campaign started in terms of lack of fundraising and slowness in nominating candidates will end up hurting them.