Canadian Politics 2022

[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:

"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.

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.

[dubsartur]

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.

And despite the hit from the period when he was in a coma in Europe, I am pretty sure he makes much more giving angry speeches and peddling advice by the hour than as a tenured professor.  And he avoids pesky ethical restrictions and work responsibilities.  For example, at one point the university noticed that he was posting videos of his university lectures on his subscription social media, and asked questions about "have you looked at the part of your contract which forbids that?"

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.

It seems like this is a structural issue in the rich Anglo countries.  Remember the New Atheists and the rationalists?  They tended to make howlers about philosophy (is-ought fallacy denialism, naturalistic fallacy denialism) and the history of religion (19th century writers of angry speeches as the best sources for the history of the Catholic church).  And Steven Pinker has written nonsense about history too.  So there are quite a few educated people professing about humanities topics without bothering to learn what actual professionals think or how they work.

Petersen's ideas about Christianity have a creepy "noble lie" smell.  He won't say that he is Christian, but he wants society to be Christian.

[dubsartur]

The story of the frozen migrants is even stranger and sadder, because it appears they were resident in Canada and trying to enter the United States.  How could being in the United States rather than Canada be worth risking your children's lives for in 2022?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/border-crossing-bodies-found-frozen-family-identified-1.6329959

And it turns out that the requirement that truckers entering the USA be vaccinated against COVID (just like people entering countries often have to show other vaccinations to enter) was imposed by the Biden administration and covers both Canada and Mexico.  So just what the convoy to Ottawa thinks they will achieve is not clear to me..

[dubsartur]

Conservative MPs have voted to removed Erin O'Toole as leader of the party after only 18 months in office https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-erin-otoole-loses-conservative-party-leadership-vote/  One of the paradoxes of Canadian politics is that the Tories retain more of the 20th century tradition of MP independence than the other big federal parties.  In general they are authoritarian, but not so much within their caucus.

The old media continue to obsessively cover the truck protests and imply that they are something like the tiki-torch brigade in Charlottesville NC

[Jubal]

O'Toole was, if I recall, tacking a bit more centrist. Does this defeat mean that the Can-Cons are likely to veer right in how they present themselves?

That is an interesting difference, though - the UK Tories are generally the best of the parties at maintaining discipline in the ranks (with the possible exception at Westminster of the SNP, who are very disciplined too AFAICT). If UK Conservatives start breaking ranks in large numbers, it's a sign that the party is probably about to go into a major internal crisis.

[dubsartur]

O'Toole was, if I recall, tacking a bit more centrist. Does this defeat mean that the Can-Cons are likely to veer right in how they present themselves?

That is an interesting difference, though - the UK Tories are generally the best of the parties at maintaining discipline in the ranks (with the possible exception at Westminster of the SNP, who are very disciplined too AFAICT). If UK Conservatives start breaking ranks in large numbers, it's a sign that the party is probably about to go into a major internal crisis.

O'Toole did a classic "appeal to the base to get nominated, then tack to the centre to try to win an election."  Parts of the Conservative base seemed quite upset that he did not push their pet causes.

The social conservative part of the Conservative base seems angry, as does the part influenced by US right-wing politics.  The problem is that "abortion, LGBT ideology, oppressive lockdowns, and liberty-destroying passports for abortion-tainted vaccines" (as a spokesman for the Campaign Life Coalition describes them) are pretty popular in Canada.  Likewise, their opposition to putting a price on GHG emissions puts the Conservative core membership outside the Canadian mainstream.  I don't know anything about their interim leader Candice Bergen. 

Canada has an affordable-housing crisis which is easy to blame on scary foreigners (the problem is that older Canadians who tend to own homes vote and write letters, so any policy to drive down housing prices faces heavy opposition).  Just like in other countries there is some unsettlement about the new ideas about gender and race which are being pushed by the Toronto media.  Old Media and the liberals have been using division about pandemic policy.  Its easy to present vaccines as a simple fix, then present the unvaccinated as the causes of everyone's troubles and not fellow Canadians who have often been misled by some very sophisticated, unscrupulous people.  The federal Liberal and CBC message on the truck protests has been that they are all far-right extremists who can never be spoken to, rather than a mix of ordinary right-wing activists and a few very hateful people.  This may drive some people who disagree with the Liberals on pandemic policy farther right. 

(OTOH, the truckers who wave banners saying "F**** Trudeau" are also confused about the difference between activism and clickbait - like him or not, Trudeau is in charge of the government whose policy they want to change).

I think a harder-right version of the federal Conservatives would focus on blaming the troubles of renters and resource workers on someone who does not vote in Canada, on opposing state action to shore up indigenous and visual minority rights, on opposing the idea of gender as identity, and on talking about how public health policy should be based on individual freedom.  But it really depends on who they chose as leader and which of that leader's gambits seem to get traction.

[Pentagathus]

If UK Conservatives start breaking ranks in large numbers, it's a sign that the party is probably about to go into a major internal crisis.

Fingers crossed

[dubsartur]

We are definitely watching when Boris will get tossed out.  Anyone who replaces him will be an ugly person too, but at least he will be out of Number 10.

One issue for the Conservative leadership contest in Canada is that the last one was in 2020, then there was the election in 2021.  Because Canada restricts political donations, and its hard to hold the traditional face-to-face events in a Canadian winter during the COVID pandemic, some potential candidates may have trouble raising funds.

One confusing issue is that the truck protests coincide with many Canadian provinces rushing to end public health measures.  I doubt that the anti-maskers will get what they want, but the anti-vaxxers may well see an end of the requirement of proof of vaccination to attend many kinds of events.  These changes seem to be a mix of evidence-based (its not clear that being vaccinated makes you less likely to transmit Omicron), ideological (SAVE THE ECONOMY - ENDEMIC ENDEMIC ENDEMIC), and political (everyone has their own folk model of COVID, and their own preferences about which activities are worth the risk).

[dubsartur]

Three responses to the truck protest in Ottawa: interim CPC leader Candice Bergen asks the protestors to leave, flailing Alberta premier and former anti-gay-rights campaigner Jason Kenny 'accidentally' compared the unvaccinated to stigmatized AIDS patients in the 1980s, and the police chief of Ottawa seems to have given up on controlling the protest.  (He wants the government to call in the Canadian Armed Forces).

At the end of January, the death rate from COVID in my province was about 1 per 100,000 per week.  In the USA it was more like 4 per 100,000!

So far, the only declared candidate for CPC chief is Pierre Poilievre.  He grew up in Saskatchewan and went to the University of Calgary, so he may lean "Reform" over "Progressive Conservative."

The inquiry into the mass shooting at Portapique will start in late February.

[dubsartur]

Because of the police's abdication of responsibility to enforce the law or clear out the protestors, residents of Ottawa have started to form their own blockades against motorcades heading to the protests.  The following writeup is from a web magazine with a red star in its logo, so YMMV:

a group of dog-walkers and moms organized themselves on social media and then set up a blockade at Riverside and Bank Streets, one of the major routes into the parliamentary precinct from the main highway. It started with about 20 people before 9am, and by noon there were more than 200 people blocking a line of flag-flying pickup trucks that stretched back hundreds of metres. Many of the participants were white-haired seniors, and many of them were women. Another human blockade set up in front of police headquarters on Elgin Street, stopping traffic coming off the highway there.

I got to Riverside after 2pm and by then there were about a thousand of us blocking the road, swarming in amongst the stopped traffic, blasting dance music through a portable PA, and generally feeling like finally we were starting to take something back. I'm told that the police initially tried to negotiate with the blockade to allow the trucks to pass, and when nobody would budge, said to them: "If you don't move, how does this end?" As you can imagine, after having gone through two and half weeks of far-right hooligans dug in on Parliament Hill, and literally everybody in the country asking that very question, this did not go over super well with my neighbours. Nobody budged and the crowd continued to swell as word spread.
...
Sometime after 4pm, after being caught in the blockade for more than seven hours and with the sun starting to set, we began to allow the pickup trucks to leave one by one, on condition that they surrender their flags and jerry cans and remove the convoy decals from their vehicles.

One thing I don't understand is why the Ottawa police don't have the capacity to hotwire a truck?  Or why its so hard to just arrest the truck owners, take their keys, and move the trucks out of downtown at their own expense.  The number of big trucks is not huge, most of the protestors' vehicles are pickup trucks.  The response to this protest has been much more peaceful and hands-off than the response to protests by First Nations and environmentalists in BC, or the treatment of reporters trying to document those protests and the police response.

Edit: on 14 February 2022, Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act.  So far he does not plan to deploy the military. So we are about to see whether the RCMP can crush a protest of righty whities with the same enthusiasm they use against lefties and First Nations.

The RCMP have arrested a group at the border blockade in Alberta who they say were equipped with body armour, long guns, and illegal high-capacity magazines.

Edit: Four of the group have been charged with conspiracy to commit murder aside from their firearms charges.  So the RCMP's story is that something very worrisome was planned.

Edit: in his statement on the arrests in Alberta, Premier Jason Kenney has a take on why the police have been slow to act:

Let's be clear: there have been tens of thousands of Canadians involved in various protests in the past several weeks, and I am sure that the vast majority of them are law-abiding and peaceful Canadians.  But we now know, at Coutts, following an exhaustive investigation from the RCMP, is that there is, at least in that case, a small cell of people who wanted to take this in a very dangerous and dark direction.  ... There's been a lot of efforts to politicize the situation at Coutts, demanding immediate enforcement over the recent days.  I understand that expectation, but it was important for the government to work with the RCM to avoid further inflaming the situation until they could address the security risk posed by that potentially violent cell group.  This is deeply concerning and I think it should send a message to all the other folks who were not aware of that cell. 

Edit: on 15 February, Ottawa's chief of police announced his resignment.

[dubsartur]

By Sunday 20 February, the truck protest outside the house of parliament in Ottawa seems to have melted away (CBC).  Only 191 people were arrested, whereas about 1200 people have been arrested so far in the Fairy Creek logging protest.  Police had to be brought from as far as Vancouver!  The secretive camp in a parking lot remains but is smaller.  The vote on Monday 21 February confirming the invocation of the federal Emergencies Act is almost sure to pass (Liberals and NDP in favour, Tories and Bloc against)

In a classic case of crank magnetism or grifters seeking a new grift, Jordan Peterson is speaking at something called the 2022 bitcoin conference https://coinsnews.com/jordan-peterson-has-been-confirmed-as-a-speaker-at-the-2022-bitcoin-conference

An indigenous nation in BC says that their GoFundMe to build a longhouse on wheels was shut down after crowdfunding accounts and bank accounts (!) associated with the truck protests were frozen https://nitter.net/git_hetxwit/status/1494495062029266947#m

Edit: Oh, and on 22 Feb, People's Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier plead not guilty to violating COVID protections at rallies in Manitoba in 2021 https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/maxime-bernier-to-plead-not-guilty-to-covid-19-charges-1.6360363