Canadian Politics 2023

[dubsartur]

For James: I have said that the biggest constitutional problem in Canada is that the PM has become a kind of elected dictator who can only be controlled by parliament and can often dodge that.  One NDP MP wants to formalize some of the rules around confidence motions.

Edit: story on parliamentary procedure reform https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/blaikie-confidence-prorogation-analysis-wherry-1.6845378

A good example of Danielle Smith's challenges: UCP candidate who hangs out on crazy right-wing social media like Smith does opens her mouth (this time it was about trans kids and sex education), Smith eventually disavows the candidate, but people have to ask "why is someone with those opinions running in your party?"

One of the basic problems of the UCP is that it mixes a right-wing party-of-power with a wing that absorbs far-right American media unironically.  The later won't accept compromises with physical or political reality, but they sound like nuts to ordinary voters.

[Jubal]

One of the basic problems of the UCP is that it mixes a right-wing party-of-power with a wing that absorbs far-right American media unironically.  The later won't accept compromises with physical or political reality, but they sound like nuts to ordinary voters.

I think this is increasingly a trend in the UK conservatives. They've often managed to square this circle in the past by doubling down hard on areas of being horrible that actually do have electoral traction - most notably being anti-immigration - and by the fact that the British tabloids are more cannily focused towards electoral success for the right than US Talk Radio is. But I think the new wave of "anti-woke" and anti-trans stuff from the Conservatives is, whilst in many ways very British (UK transphobia has very noticeable differences in tone to its US equivalent), a signal that maybe the Tory right actually are moving away from the sort of cynical but effective electoralism that they've managed to sign up to at least for the last decade and a half. The US right can get away with this via extreme voter suppression and cooping big chunks of voters up in exceptional closed media environments, a mental cell whose walls are talk radio, Tucker Carlson, ultra-politicised churches, and a country sufficiently big and car-centric that social contact with "the other side" is simply very unlikely for a lot of US Republicans. The right AFAICT can't replicate that in the UK, Canada, or Australia quite as effectively.

I was having a conversation last night with po8crg about this wrt the British far left, and the problems of and for parties that demand that you accept a wholesale world view rather than just selling you some policies they think you might like without demanding your ideological coherence. Some factions of the right of the US Republicans are kind of in that mould: they're whole-worldview parties more than usual political factions and that's an incredibly difficult thing for parties elsewhere to replicate (though it has horrifying staying power when it does: look at some of the old religious parties in the Netherlands which stick around reliably).

[dubsartur]

We are probably going to see because Pierre Polievre is more likely than not to become Prime Minister by 2030 (its possible that the Conservatives do not get the most seats in the next federa; election and the party tosses him out again but it would be very unusual if the Liberals form two more governments after eight years in power).  He has not spent his previous career rambling on podcasts about how getting vaccinated is succumbing to the charms of a tyrant but he shouts about things which get the far right on social media excited.

There are probably Liberals who have a cunning plan to pass the reins to Chriystia Freeland or similar but even if Justin Trudeau cooperated, transitions like that are difficult for a party known for corruption and indecision.  I think its a bit easier if the party is relatively popular and has successes to boast of.

[dubsartur]

The United Conservative Party of Alberta has won by a few thousand votes in a jurisdiction with millions of residents.  Because first past the post is awful, that gives them a solid majority.

[Jubal]

The United Conservative Party of Alberta has won by a few thousand votes in a jurisdiction with millions of residents.  Because first past the post is awful, that gives them a solid majority.

Uch, that's sad.

[dubsartur]

It looks like my new source mislead me and the actual vote was pretty close to the final share of seats (but many ridings were very close) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Alberta_general_election

The saddest things is that the right in Canada in general, and in Alberta in particular, have no answer to "if we keep burning fossil fuels to the end of the century, the planet will become unlivable for farming and civilization as we know them."  They have no plan but they just keep throwing temper tantrums to avoid easier changes today. 

[dubsartur]

Former Conservative Party of Canada head Erin O'Toole has given a speech warning against irresponsible rhetoric and embracement of online hate and conspiracy theories https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/erin-otoole-leaving-politics-social-media-1.6877453

Perhaps the kind of thing he is thinking about is the grandparents in the BC interior who interrupted a primary-school sports event to accuse one of the contestants of being trans and demand that she produce ID on the basis of not looking femme enough.  They totally got that from corporate social media or far-right outfits like Fox News and Rebel Media.

While the population of Canada reaches 40 million, the Supreme Court of Canada has approved the Safe Third Country Agreement (ie. the "migrants from Latin America stay in the USA we don't want you here" treaty)

The case against mortgage broker Greg Martel who owes investors $226 million CAD continues.  Martel assures the courts that he will return to Canada and answer complaints real soon now.

[dubsartur]

Looking back at the Canadian Politics 2019 thread: the Liberal government has pledged to phase out "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies which was already in their platform in 2015.  They have decided not to separate the offices of (partisan) Minister of Justice and (non-partisan) Attorney General even though that would have avoided the SNC Lavalin affair when the Attorney General said no and there was no way to pressure her off the record.  So decarbonizing and structural reforms are still not priorities.

The government is also pushing interest rates higher and higher in the apparent belief that inflation is basically caused by people borrowing money to bid for scarce resources, rather than COVID, extreme weather, an aging population, and the RU-UA war taking goods and labour out of the market without reducing demand.  In the USA this policy is probably behind a lot of the strange behaviour of web service companies this year, in Canada the effects are harder to see unless you know someone who is renewing a mortgage and saw the payments triple.  In my province there is still a serious housing crisis, local governments are finally enabling more construction after being pushed by the provincial government which threatened to take away their power to zone.  But it takes time especially because of lumber shortages and labour shortages (and because capitalists want to build giant glass condo towers rather than eg. row houses or modest sized apartment buildings).

Wildfires are bad in many parts of Canada this summer too.

As an example of local news, here is a case of fighting over who should pay to raise a weir to keep a river viable during climate change.

[dubsartur]

Maybe I should not post this because its not local, but Macleans has a longform piece about a wealthy out-of-provincer infringing on beach rights in Prince Edward Island and the big question whether it matters given the rate of erosion.

[Jubal]

...capitalists want to build giant glass condo towers rather than eg. row houses or modest sized apartment buildings).

This is one of those things I just don't intuitively get. Not why capitalists want to build those things: presumably luxury housing = more profit per unit building space, especially condos where it's also not as if you can fit more families into the space, you're just maximising the wealth of who you're selling to. What I really don't get is why even rich people want to live in giant glass monstrosities. They look horrible, they can't have good heat regulation (I guess probably what they have is expensive AC), and they just seem like an inconvenient mess of a way to live.

It's also being reported prominently by the BBC that Trudeau is having a go at Facebook for refusing to serve news in response to a profit-sharing-with-news-providers law? I don't think I realised Canada had one of those now.

[dubsartur]

...capitalists want to build giant glass condo towers rather than eg. row houses or modest sized apartment buildings).

This is one of those things I just don't intuitively get. Not why capitalists want to build those things: presumably luxury housing = more profit per unit building space, especially condos where it's also not as if you can fit more families into the space, you're just maximising the wealth of who you're selling to. What I really don't get is why even rich people want to live in giant glass monstrosities. They look horrible, they can't have good heat regulation (I guess probably what they have is expensive AC), and they just seem like an inconvenient mess of a way to live.

It's also being reported prominently by the BBC that Trudeau is having a go at Facebook for refusing to serve news in response to a profit-sharing-with-news-providers law? I don't think I realised Canada had one of those now.

I didn't know that people relied on Facebook for regional and national news!  Canadian news sites are mostly usable if you use an ad blocker and a script blocker, unlike German and Austrian news sites.

One way of looking at Canadian federal and provincial governments is as institutions which create and sustain monopolies and monopsonies in order to have an industrial economy in a large, thinly-populated country.  There are three or four major telecommunications companies which all offer the same poor, expensive services for example, and Canadian military shipbuilding is all funnelled through a handful of companies in the Maritime provinces with well-connected owners who hire workers in the right ridings even when plenty of European or East Asian companies could do better work faster and cheaper.  The remaining for-profit Old Media organizations and the CBC have some leverage with this government, they got a subsidy law written which quietly excludes the small online-first outfits which are probably the future of critical reporting but lets the owners of the big outfits keep extracting money for a few more years.   I would guess this was part of the same program.

Many wealthy Indo-Canadians and Chinese-Canadians like big blocky houses that look like fortresses in beautiful locations.  You would have to ask them or their architects why they build them like that.

[Jubal]

I didn't know that people relied on Facebook for regional and national news

I mean I'd guess that 20-25 percent of the populations of a lot of western countries rely on Facebook for news at this point from the sorts of usage figures I've seen. Which, yes, is terrifying.

[dubsartur]

Meanwhile here is some local news about obstacles to building more housing https://www.capitaldaily.ca/news/provincial-funding-and-simpler-bylaws-in-sight-for-secondary-suites

Canada has a lot of systems which basically need more officials per capita to handle routine business (the courts for example).

[dubsartur]

Its still the August/September pause in news where everyone is on vacation or starting their kids in school or attending party conferences.  Reporters are trying to make stories out of the Tories doing well in the polls, but the federal government does not have to call an election until 2025.

Macleans has a longform piece on Danielle Smith the MLA for Fox News and premier of Alberta https://macleans.ca/longforms/unsteady-reign-danielle-smith/

A CBC story about Mounties who let themselves in to a home to serve a traffic ticket and surprised the homeowner coming out of the shower.  It was a topos on the early episodes of Midsommer Murders from 1997-1998 that the police protagonists picked locks, bumped doors, and otherwise entered without a warrant by every means short of breaking.  How does police conduct where you live compare?

MP Elizabeth May is trying to get the right clearance to access the evidence for the CSIS report on Chinese interference in Canadian elections.  Right now its a government report and a series of newspaper stories, and neither can be independently verified.

Oh, and two of the 87 BC MLAs have changed parties: one defected from the former-BC-Liberals to the Conservatives for usual incoherent ideological reasons, and a BC NDP MLA was expelled from the party after a human-resources complaint.

Edit: And wow, the PM just accused agents of the Indian government of murdering a Sikh separatist in Surrey, Greater Vancouver in June https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-indian-government-nijjar-1.6970498

Edit: as part of the slow-news season, some former elected officials are founding a new federal party with vibes like the American technocrats https://www.centreicecanadians.ca/team  Its really hard to get anyone from a new party elected under First Past the Post and even harder without a regional base (one founder is from Alberta, the other from New Brunswick).

Edit: on a podcast, a Globe and Mail reporter says that they were about to publish a story accusing the Indian government of assassinating Hardeep Singh Nijjar when the PMO got ahead of the story

[Jubal]

So, Canada has been in international news a lot recently, due to the tensions with India and the recent standing ovation the parliament gave with a guy who turned out to have been in the SS. And the CPC seem to now have a chunky lead in the polling averages I can see.

Presumably the Liberals don't want an election under current circumstances, but nor do the opposition centre-left, so it's unlikely to happen until 2025 unless the Liberals' fortunes reverse or the Liberals start doing badly enough that the NDP/Greens think they can gain by pulling the plug somehow?