Canadian Politics Thread

I'd like to see the breakdown of the areas surveyed in that poll, but Tories losing many votes shouldn't be too surprising, no?

The NDP seems to be bleeding far more support than the CPC.

that would make more sense imho.

French Immersion schools are jokingly refered to as "White Immersion" amongst more than a few East Vancouver parents.

Oh, that's the same situation in Ottawa.

Really? I grew up in Ottawa but I don't remember hearing that. (I haven't lived there in 12 years tbf.)

(Also don't remember the French immersion student body being especially white, although I can see how that could make sense in Vancouver.)

many xposts

I am exagerating because I am bit tired of Quebec self-perception. Of course, Quebec's culture is 'unique' and an amazing place. However, we could make the argument for a lot of cultures being 'unique' in North America, even inside of Canada. I fail to see how Quebec is more unique than First Nations cultures, the Pacific Northwest, the Maritimes, New Mexico or Miami, for example. It is far from being as simple as '6 millions francophones in a sea of 300 millions anglophones'.

xpost

Yeah, Ottawa's schools have changed a lot in the past 12 years, at least inside the Greenbelt.

Oh boy

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/04/17/trudeaus-response-to-boston-marathon-bombing-was-unacceptable-made-excuses-for-terrorists-harper-says/

but i do find trudeau's comments unusual in the context of making a statement directly after the attacks, when he is also expressing support for the united states in general and victims of the attack in particular.

and i eagerly anticipate him doing this kind of thing over and over again.

jesus fuck Harper, you won the election - fucking govern.

feel like justin could be canada's palin. i do think that despite his huge popularity, as he continues to open his mouth and spew empty rhetoric, his lustre will fade.

a new friend worked for the PM's office before moving here. didn't say too much explicitly but helped solidify some suspicions. apparently she worked on some kind of panel with justin and he would talk out his ass in a way that made his handlers cringe. pretty loose, i know, but the more i hear from him, the more i see his platitudes as palinesque in their ignorance.

Palin at least had significant experience as a mayor and governor.

Justin may end up being a disaster, but I'm positive he wouldn't be the same kind of disaster. He won't harbor a core contempt for intelligence/education, and I'm sure he'll be able to improvise answers to questions like "What newspapers do you read?" (I've got to cast some skepticism on "significant" in Sund4r's post.)

Two terms as mayor and one as governor counts as significant experience in government, don't you think? More than 5 years as an MP?

I mean, by what standard was Palin a disaster? I don't think much of her but she won re-election easily as mayor, was extremely popular as governor, and I have to assume that the failure of the McCain/Palin ticket was not primarily her doing. She went on to be influential with e.g. the Tea Party movement.

For me, Palin is sui generis. She's the most ridiculous person ever to get close to the top spot in my lifetime. Dan Quayle was FDR by comparison. (No, McCain's loss was not her fault. She was a liability towards the end, but she was the only reason he ever got in the game in the first place. Which I count as neither here nor there when it comes to her essential ridiculousness.)

Oh, I agree that she is ridiculous. I'm just saying that she was an experienced and successful politician. JT is not the former. It remains to be seen whether he can be the latter.

I'll give you successful, in that she won elections, but her experience doesn't seem all that much more impressive than Justin's. He's won his riding twice, then won the party's leadership. She won the mayorship of Wasilla twice. Not sure how many people are in Trudeau's riding, but Wasilla had about 1,000. Then she won the governship and served half a term. Nationally, she didn't win anything within her party--a very desparate crank picked her name out of a hat. I'll give her a slight advantage, maybe. But to return to my initial point, whether he works out or not, it's inconceivable to me that Justin could ever perform as dismally as Palin did for those few months in 2008.

"desperate"--glass houses and all that.

The first original idea I've heard from JT and it's actually great imo: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/trudeau-comes-to-aid-of-muzzled-conservative-backbenchers/article11418337/

I've thought for a while that the disempowerment of individual MPs is the biggest weakness in our system as it actually exists. If JT is going to seriously pursue this, I might seriously think about voting for the LPC for the first time.

I see the boxing match continues; Trudeau vs. Harper

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/djclimenhaga/2013/04/tory-slime-machine-losing-fight-it-picked-justin-trudeau-now

Will check out that new ad on YouTube or something tonight.

I noticed that, for example, the Globe and Mail really ran with the supposed inappropriateness of his comments about Boston. They had at least two editorials that criticised him for it, and they kept it up until, like, yesterday. Rather than focussing on Harper's exploitation of the situation. Although that is also a bit of a non-story.

Petition opposing the government's move to give the PMO and Cabinet direct control over all employee contracts at the CBC:

http://act.friends.ca/ea-action/action?ea.client.id=33&ea.campaign.id=20400&ea.tracking.id=272c8416

what the fucking fuck

BC election? I didn't really follow it beyond the polls. The NDP lead was declining pretty steadily through the campaign, right? Still, I definitely didn't expect the Liberals to EXPAND their majority. If we needed another lesson not to put too much stock in opinion polls, this would be it, I guess?

What will this mean in terms of policies for the next term?

Well, I expect this will deliver the knockout punch for the mayor of Toronto. I'd give him a week at most.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2013/05/17/tor-rob-ford-crack-allegations.html

you don't know rob ford then

He then proceeded to a city hall flag-raising event held to honour the International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia, where he appeared shaken as he read a proclamation. As he left, he did not respond when asked twice whether he smokes crack.

i think it's surprising that the darker parts of his personal life have never been exposed-- okay, it's pretty likely that he at least drunkenly propositioned a woman at an official function but other than that he just looked like the arrogant local politicians you can find anywhere. i wonder what's going on with the guy, what led him to rolling his escalade up to a trap house and smoking rock with somalis.

would def read his memoir

after a day riding high on schadenfreude i'm starting to feel kind of conflicted about all this rob ford crack stuff. on the one hand i want more than anything for this to blow up & end his career... on the other hand, it's doing a lot to perpetuating stigma towards drug addicts most of whom are not rich ripely hateable mayors but vulnerable ppl with a serious health problem... also it's kind of a cheap shot, like, this is the scandal that's going to break him? after shrugging off all the terrible bigoted stuff he's said & done thruout his entire career latching onto this kindof lets him off the hook... that's kinda wack

Hey, we're in The New Republic and Slate--good job on tourist outreach, Mayor Ford.

flopson otm

xpost

and Real Time with Bill Maher!

after shrugging off all the terrible bigoted stuff he's said & done thruout his entire career latching onto this kindof lets him off the hook... that's kinda wack

― flopson, Saturday, May 18, 2013 5:16 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark

you think this lets him off the hook? really???

I think he means the focus on crack will overshadow all the other bad stuff - but I'm not really seeing that, timelines of shitty Ford behaviour are ubiquitous now.

maybe I'm reading flopson wrong.

Ford writing the political playbook on how to handle damaging accusations:

1. Give a one-word response ("Ridiculous"), then disappear for a couple of days.

2. Cancel your radio show, where you'd be able to tell your side of the story without a single reporter to contend with.

3. Flee every camera in sight.

4. Get your brother out there to speak for you.

if anything this will put the focus even more on his horrible activities, it's just the last straw

and seriously, any mayor who opposes treatment centres for addicts but smokes crack himself deserves EVERYTHING he is going to get

sweetest thing so far was reading that he'd been fired (again) from his precious football coaching gig.

Federalized bilingualism was the failed experiment of the 70s and 80s. I considered French a natural fact of life even though I only spoke it at school or among a few friends. My parents were optimistic. My kindergarten friends were like "yo did you see smurfs last night?" And I was like "no but I watch les schtroumpfs."

There's a generation of Canadians who could not follow their closest hockey team and only followed the Montreal Canadiens because, for whatever reason, French radio covered the entire nation while English radio stopped at Winnipeg or something.

French seemed to be the thing that was going to save lower middle class whites.

Lower middle class and upper working class anglophone whites thought bilingualism was a route to class transcendence.

Joke is my parents thought institutionalized bilingualism would get me a job. I now use French as my daily language but my work is 90% English.

are you talking to somebody i've killfiled or something?

you think this lets him off the hook? really???

― we're up all night to get (s1ocki), Thursday, May 23, 2013 9:41 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

well, if he does resign over this he'll just get replaced by someone with equally awful policies who doesn't smoke crack and is less of a pr disaster... thing abt rob ford is he's like, the id of right-wing cdn politics let loose. even though everyone else is horrified by the shit he says in the case of other conservative politicians it's not because they disagree, it's because they know u don't ever say that shit out loud in public. like most of them agree with "If you are not doing needles and you are not gay, you wouldn't get AIDS probably" and that's their implicit justification for cutting aids-prevention funding, they just don't campaign on that shit, they wait til they get elected & then cut funding along with a million other things & barely anyone notices

and seriously, any mayor who opposes treatment centres for addicts but smokes crack himself deserves EVERYTHING he is going to get

― we're up all night to get (s1ocki), Thursday, May 23, 2013 10:31 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ok yeah, i agree with this

What's a killfile? Is that like a suggest ban or are you actually threatening me?

He's not threatening you.

If the NDP keeps pushing this Senate abolition business, I really may vote LPC.

i) Reopening the Constitution (which would almost be definitely be required) at this point just seems like an unnecessary can of worms.

ii) As far as I know, most federal states have two legislative bodies, one of which represents the regions. A unicameral legislature seems wrong for a large, diverse country with strong provinces. Reforming the Senate would not be a bad idea [although i) is still an issue].

Lower middle class and upper working class anglophone whites thought bilingualism was a route to class transcendence.

Yeah, but not just because French itself would open doors. French immersion programs in Anglo neighbourhoods were popular with parents in part because they offered de facto streaming: most of the Anglo immersion kids could read at or beyond grade level in English before being enrolled, and most of their families were reasonably motivated and oriented toward education. If you couldn't afford a private school (my parents couldn't), immersion was the next best thing.

I did my last couple of years of school in a public high school that didn't offer an immersion track, and couldn't believe how much trouble most of my new classmates had writing in English. The kids in my old French immersion school were much better writers in English, despite years of doing all classes in francais aside from 60-90 minutes a day of "E.L.A."