Author Topic: Canadian Politics 2019  (Read 18033 times)

Jubal

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Re: Canadian Politics 2019
« Reply #45 on: October 23, 2019, 01:52:58 PM »
I may be a bit overly hard-line on this but really anyone in Singh's position who doesn't go for electoral reform, regardless of his priority list, isn't up to the job. In the long run, the NDP - and therefore their political goals - stand to benefit hugely from it. Fundamentally, Canada as a whole has a fairly reliable centre-left lean (by my brief checks, I don't think there's been a vote majority for centre-right/right parties since 1984) and any sort of decent electoral reform would make the NDP reliably a governing partner. Failing to press hard for it would feel like gross short-termism, to me. And yeah, I think coalition negotiations are something the press are often bad at covering but I'll be interested to see what emerges.

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thanks for providing a space where I could put my thoughts in order that is not as nasty and full of BS as many other places for talking about politics
You're very welcome! :)
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dubsartur

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Re: Canadian Politics 2019
« Reply #46 on: October 23, 2019, 07:11:10 PM »
I may be a bit overly hard-line on this but really anyone in Singh's position who doesn't go for electoral reform, regardless of his priority list, isn't up to the job. In the long run, the NDP - and therefore their political goals - stand to benefit hugely from it. Fundamentally, Canada as a whole has a fairly reliable centre-left lean (by my brief checks, I don't think there's been a vote majority for centre-right/right parties since 1984) and any sort of decent electoral reform would make the NDP reliably a governing partner. Failing to press hard for it would feel like gross short-termism, to me. And yeah, I think coalition negotiations are something the press are often bad at covering but I'll be interested to see what emerges.
I agree, replacing FPTP would have so many good effects and I think the Liberals would still be the largest party in government more often than not.  Human beings are just not suited to play the game which FPTP in a many-party system creates.  Jaghmeet Singh became leader after I left Canada so I don't have a strong feeling of what kind of person he is, and apparently he was still talking about electoral reform as a priority in October.

Edit: Apparently he talked about electoral reform again on October the 24th so three days after the election.  NDP doctrine is mixed-member proportional representation with a referendum after the second election held under the new system.

Quebec will hold a referendum on switching to mixed-member proportional, the party introducing it had promised to introduce it directly.  I believe Alberta briefly used a system like that for urban ridings after the First World War but the next government changed its mind.

The commentariat likes to speculate which parties will replace their leaders after the election.  Is that something which British journalists get excited about?  To me, we spend way too much time talking about leaders and less about how to organize ourselves to achieve our goals, too much trying to predict the future and not enough on what policies would be best.  I have lots of thoughts about politics but I have not been brave enough to turn them into action other than the occasional march :(
« Last Edit: October 25, 2019, 06:46:33 PM by dubsartur »

dubsartur

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Re: Canadian Politics 2019
« Reply #47 on: October 29, 2019, 09:54:22 AM »
Elizabeth May has said that she intends to step down as party leader sometime after this winter but before 2023, the date to be determined by the party's judgements about how long the new government will last.  She will continue to serve as MP. 

Justin Trudeau has said that he will lead a minority government not a coalition and is talking about "working with all the parties."  If he really plans to take it one vote at a time, negotiating with the Conservatives on pipelines and the other parties on pharmacare, it will be an exciting parliament for politics-watchers.

And humh, she is considering running for Speaker of the House of Commons which would require stepping down as leader if elected.
« Last Edit: October 30, 2019, 09:25:55 PM by dubsartur »

dubsartur

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Re: Canadian Politics 2019
« Reply #48 on: November 04, 2019, 10:38:07 PM »
After the Green Party of Canada annual convention and council meeting on the weekend of 2 and 3 November, Elizabeth May has stepped down as party leader but will remain as MP.  A former CBC journalist named Jo-Ann Roberts is interim party leader until the leadership election in 2020.  I don't know anything about her.

As I said, I think she is a good MP, and since I have never fought an election I won't be a "back-seat driver" about what she did or did not do in 2015 or 2019.

In terms of building a shared model of reality, a bad sign is that the Alberta and Saskatchewan commentariat are complaining bitterly about the Liberals (who gave them 2 out of the 3 pipelines they wanted, and passed a bill C-69 on pipeline regulation which the Greens say is littered with places for ministers to over-rule environmental concerns).  Alberta is still the province with the highest GDP per capita, and they chose to collect minimal taxes and rely on oil royalties rather than take a 'Norwegian' approach of saving and investing the oil revenues (they have such a fund, but not much money stayed in it for long while the Progressive Conservatives were in charge).  I am sure the children's books in Alberta have the fable of the Ant and the Grasshopper :)
« Last Edit: November 04, 2019, 10:52:38 PM by dubsartur »

Jubal

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Re: Canadian Politics 2019
« Reply #49 on: November 06, 2019, 09:48:15 PM »
Mm, something I've noticed politically is that there's rarely as much difference as there logically should be between disappointing people a bit and a lot. This is probably exacerbated if people don't have a commentariat who point out when a compromise is a compromise, but it makes for very odd political calculations. I think it's worsened by far in FPTP countries where voters don't get to see parties making compromises and having to justify them all the time as a normal matter of course.
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dubsartur

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Re: Canadian Politics 2019
« Reply #50 on: November 11, 2019, 10:12:27 PM »
Although one of my Italian friends is outraged at the perfectly normal coalition switch which just happened in Italy ... even though in a system like Italy you just vote for your party and then its MPs have to negotiate with the other parties and try to form a government.

One problem with just refusing to talk about so many topics is that you give up the chance to educate people on why those are off the table.  To build a consensus, you have to admit that more than one position is possible in theory and talk about the consequences of moving to a different one.

Meanwhile Don Cherry, a mossy old troll of a hockey commentator, was fired for saying that he does not see enough recent immigrants wearing a poppy for remembrance day.  (I would say that in the parts of Canada where I have lived, Remembrance Day is pretty free of jingoism, except the occasional undertone of "support the troops" and "they died for our freedom" in the newspapers).  I hope nobody introduces him to YouTube and he just crawls into a nice deep sunless cave for the winter.

Edit: And nope, he has appeared on Fox News with someone called Tucker Carlson and on the Rebel Media, a far-right, online-only outlet which wants to be Canada's Breitbart.

Edit:/ And double nope, he is launching a podcast called Grapevine.  That is what the slick young sophists do for the old lumps of dried bitumen who actually believe their own patter.

Edit: And triple nope, Quillette, a right-wing online magazine aimed at the urban and universitied, plans to publish an article "The Day the Social Media Mob Came for Me" under his name.
« Last Edit: November 29, 2019, 03:30:18 PM by dubsartur »

dubsartur

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Re: Canadian Politics 2019
« Reply #51 on: November 20, 2019, 08:24:16 AM »
Brian Mulroney, former Progressive Conservative PM (from 1984 to 1993), has come out with a speech citing Thomas Aquinas (Canadian PMs are usually Catholics from Ontario or Quebec) and arguing that politicians should take serious action to reduce emissions even if it will be unpopular.  Lisa Raitt, former deputy leader of the Conservative Party who lost her Toronto seat in October, has said that her party needs to think seriously whether being the party of the tar sands is something they can win elections on (while pointing out that the Liberals had the same targets from 2015 to 2019 as the Tories had until 2015 ... see previous discussion about differences in rhetoric versus differences in actions).

Ooh!  And Jason Kenney, Premier of Alberta and probably Conservative Party leadership hopeful sometime next decade, just fired the election commissioner who is investigating allegations that he provided $60,000 in funds to someone who ran for head of his party, said all the nasty things which needed to be said about Kenny's most dangerous rival, then dropped out of the race and endorsed Kenney (it may also shock you, but there were issues with the electronic voting at informal polling stations linked to Jason Kenney's campaign).  The elections officials in Canada are about as nonpartisan as librarians so this is a big deal.

This is known as the 'kamikaze campaign' scandal, because Canadian politics are weird.

Lastly, Paul Wells explains some of the Ottawa media's gripes about the structure of Justin Trudeau's cabinets:
 
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If you have a minister of middle-class prosperity and a minister of economic development and an entirely separate minister of rural economic development and a minister of workforce development—remember when the workforce was part of the economy? OK, boomer—and a minister of small business and a minister of finance and a minister of industry and a treasury-board president, who’s running the economy?

It’s a trick question, of course. None of them is. Differences among them will be settled at the Block Formerly Known as Langevin, from whence emissaries will be dispatched to inform the eight economic ministers of their opinions.
« Last Edit: November 21, 2019, 01:32:19 PM by dubsartur »

dubsartur

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Re: Canadian Politics 2019
« Reply #52 on: November 27, 2019, 04:55:45 PM »
The United Conservative Party of Alberta are planning to change the Elections Finance Act in spring 2020.  Banning corporate and union donations was one of the NDP government's first acts (again, they replaced a 44 year old government in a petro-state ... can you imagine the level of corruption?) and funding violations may be what sends premier Jason Kenny to prison instead of the Prime Minister's Office.

dubsartur

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Re: Canadian Politics 2019
« Reply #53 on: December 12, 2019, 10:08:14 PM »
And what is surely the most exciting political news of the evening, Andrew Scheer has announced that he is resigning as head of the Conservative Party of Canada. He will continue to be a MP "for the near future."  Apparently he was first elected MP at age 25 and has been MP ever since.

He was accused of diverting party funds to pay for his children's private school.
« Last Edit: December 13, 2019, 12:45:19 PM by dubsartur »

Jubal

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Re: Canadian Politics 2019
« Reply #54 on: December 16, 2019, 11:43:13 PM »
Is there much speculation about his likely replacement?
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dubsartur

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Re: Canadian Politics 2019
« Reply #55 on: December 18, 2019, 11:05:25 AM »
There is, but so far the likely candidates are keeping their cards close to their chests.  Jason Kenney may not be happy because he is in the middle of loudly picking a fight with Ottawa as he drives Alberta into a recession in the name of austerity.  There is also speculation about why this comes out now, and whether someone lured Andrew Scheer into accepting the funds with the express purpose of leaking it (although keep in mind that a year ago an avuncular Conservative MP and former cabinet minister resigned after sending "sexually explicit photos and a video" to someone on Instagram who turned out to be an agent of a Foreign Power, not everything is about Canadian politics).

There is some talk that they will try a short leadership race in case the current government collapses (the one which ended up Scheer vs. Bernier took almost two years).

I won't touch the opinion pieces explaining that the secret for Conservative victory is for the Conservatives to adopt the writer's pet policy, or speaking of returning to strong conservative principles which somehow unite the factions within the actually existing Canadian right, with a sixteen-cubit sarissa.
« Last Edit: December 18, 2019, 11:24:00 AM by dubsartur »

Jubal

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Re: Canadian Politics 2019
« Reply #56 on: December 18, 2019, 04:29:58 PM »
Heh. I worry that I'm about to be writing the UK Lib Dem equivalents of those opinion pieces in the near future...
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dubsartur

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Re: Canadian Politics 2019
« Reply #57 on: December 18, 2019, 10:45:47 PM »
Well, as long as you are honest about your qualifications and goals!  I just got tired ten years ago of the dishonesty ("do you really know anything about the inner workings of that party, or do you just buy drinks for people who swear they do?"), poor thinking ("momentum? seriously?"), and resistance to evidence ("you said that your party had to do that because they lost the last election, now you say they have to do the same thing because they won") of the professional havers-of-opinions who write so many of those.

On the lighter side, the Liberals want Jody Wilson-Raybould to move out of her nicely located, cabinet-minister sized office.  They don't understand why anyone could see something funny about telling an indigenous woman that she has to stop occupying territory as soon as the original owners ask for it back.

And a SNC Lavalin executive has been found guilty on all charges for corruption in Libya.
« Last Edit: December 18, 2019, 10:52:21 PM by dubsartur »

Jubal

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Re: Canadian Politics 2019
« Reply #58 on: December 20, 2019, 04:11:47 PM »
Yes - I think it's at least fair to say that I do have a better window than the average journalist on the internals of the party, and my political affiliations and goals are reasonably clear ones!
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dubsartur

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Re: Canadian Politics 2019
« Reply #59 on: December 24, 2019, 11:32:55 AM »
Jaime Girard, head of fundraising for the Conservative Party of Canada, is interim executive director after a Scheer supporter resigned.  Dates for the CPC leadership race will probably be announced in the spring: so far the rumours about who might run focus on an assortment of current and former MPs and cabinet ministers.

Its common for people who relocate for work to have the cost of their children's education covered, but Stephen Harper very pointedly sent his children to public school (a friend taught one of them), and someone leaked the expense controversy to three Canadian newspapers.  So if you are conspiracy-minded, things may be afoot inside the CPC.  (In the same way, someone in the LPC probably chose to try to make Jody Wilson-Raybould's office into a story on the Friday before the verdict in the first SNC-Lavalin trial was announced on Monday).
« Last Edit: December 24, 2019, 11:47:58 AM by dubsartur »