Art, Writing, and Learning: The Clerisy Quarter > Discussion and Debate - The Philosopher's Plaza

Canadian Politics 2022

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dubsartur:
This is a placeholder for a new politics thread!  This year there will be a provincial election in Ontario under their new fixed-term elections act.  Federally, we have all the issues which Justin Trudeau said he wanted to deal with in 2015 and then found would annoy powerful people to actually change, plus the pandemic, extreme weather which is straining provincial resources, a protectionist United States government, a genocidal and slightly less peaceful than usual Chinese government, and the fallout from the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban.

Edit: oh, and the latest attempt to end the culture of sexual harrassment in the Canadian Armed Forces

People who like personal politics suspect that Justin Trudeau will resign circa 2023 to give the party time to align behind and publicize a new leader, but its really not clear who would replace him other than finance minister and deputy PM Chrystia Freeland.

dubsartur:
Systems collapse is politics/government-adjacent.  In the last few months, many suppliers overseas stopped shipping to Canada or started charging ridiculous fees like CAD 55 for a 5 x 5 x 30 cm low-value, slow package.  The destruction of local highways by flooding obviously delays things but "slow" is not the same as "not shipping at all."  And yet some orders from the UK are relatively normal-priced.

Does anyone know of anything recent on the state of supply chains?  Many of the ones I saw were focused on the state of ports and trucking in California, and then omicron came.  The US Postal Service does not seem to have raised its rates.

dubsartur:
Personal politics in Alberta: the Justice Minister of Alberta has been asked to take leave after CBC reporters revealed he called Edmonton's chief of police in 2021 to discuss that he had been ticketed for distracted driving https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-minister-of-justice-jason-kenney-1.6318678 and anti-vaxer former Calgary mayoral candidate Kevin J. Johnson fled the country for Montana before being arrested by American police and sent back https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/kevin-johnston-released-bail-unlawful-at-large-calgary-edmonton-1.6319660 He is also facing jail time in Ontario. 

The minister, who is black, says he called because he was concerned that he had been racially profiled.

"In the last year, (former mayoral candidate) Johnston has been convicted of hate crimes, three counts of contempt, criminal harassment of an AHS employee and causing a disturbance at a downtown Calgary mall when he refused to wear a mask."

Oh, and a woman in Ontario was abducted by unknown parties in police gear claiming to be police https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-suspects-who-abducted-woman-in-wasaga-beach-ont-claimed-to-be-police-2/

dubsartur:
The federal government is requiring truckers who wish to enter Canada to provide proof of vaccination against COVID.  The Tories are up in arms about this and a convoy of trucks is heading to Ottawa to protest all vaccine mandates and all restrictions on the access of unvaccinated people to public spaces.

A group of four migrants froze to death after crossing into Canada on foot in a heavy storm to evade the Safe Third Country Agreement which sends migrants who appear at official border crossings back to the United States. 

Jordan Peterson finally retired from the University of Toronto and opened the new phase of his career with two opinion pieces in Canada's farther-right national daily the National Post.  One complained that about the sinister wokes at the University of Toronto and presented his retirement with emeritus status as the result of persecution, the other came out hardcore against public health measures.  I quote excerpts to give the flavour:


--- Quote ---"I spent more than three hours on the phone this weekend trying to get through to the online security department of one of Canada’s major banks. ... This all occurred after my patience had already been exhausted in the aftermath of trying to fly in Canada. ... because I am an entitled Westerner, accustomed to my privileges, I got whiny about it. ... We’ve demolished two Christmas seasons in a row. Life is short. These are rare occasions. We’re stopping kids from attending school. We’re sowing mistrust in our institutions in a seriously dangerous manner. We’re frightening people to make them comply. ... I was recently in Nashville, Tennessee. No lockdowns. No masks. No COVID regulations to speak of. People are going about their lives. Why can that be the case in Tennessee (and in other U.S. states, such as Florida) when there are curfews (curfews!) in Quebec, two years after the pandemic started, with a vaccination rate of nearly 80 per cent? (The rate of death from COVID per million Tennesseers is more than four times the rate of death from COVID in my part of Canada- ed.)

... hiding behind our masks, afraid to send our children (who are in no danger more serious than risk of the flu) to school, charging university students full tuition for tenth-rate online “education,” pitting family member against family member over vaccine policy and, most seriously, compromising the great economic engine upon which our health also depends? ... Enough masks. Enough social gathering limitations. Enough restaurant closures. Enough undermining of social trust. Make the bloody vaccines available to those who want them. Quit using force to ensure compliance on the part of those who don’t. ... Set a date. Open the damn country back up, before we wreck something we can’t fix.
--- End quote ---

He is scheduled to give a talk in Tennessee in March.

BC's capacity to track the COVID pandemic except as cases in hospital and RNA in sewage has collapsed over the past few weeks due to the explosion in cases of Omicron.

Pentagathus:
I'm sure JBP's retirement was entirely down to persecution by the woke far left Maoists of Toronto and absolutely nothing to do with his own health issues caused by benzodiazepine addiction.
I watched a clip of him on JRE earlier today and good lord has he lost the plot. He always had a talent for spouting nonsense when it came to religion and philosophy but he claimed that "the bible was literally the only book" in western culture and thus that every book since has derived from the bible and that somehow this makes the bible not merely true, but the basis or essence of truth.

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