Open for Business: Canadian Politics 2019

On a slightly unrelated note, I remember reading Tintin au Congo as an eight year-old at the Bibliothèque de Côte-des-Neiges and it was a perfectly normal, educational thing to do at the time.

I mean, if the gist of the argument is something like 'blackface is always more hurtful in a country with a long traumatic history of slavery than it is in a province that has practiced slavery on a relatively small scale and for a much shorter period of time', it's not wrong

I'm not sure why Quebec should be different from English Canada in this regard?

His argument is that English Canada is more Americanized than Quebec. Insofar as much of ROC culture is essentially indistinguishable from American culture (a typical Québécois claim), it more readily parses blackface as inherently racist.

Like Montreal is the first non-american city to have a baseball team and part of it is thanks to Jackie Robinson's one season stay with the Royals, it has the world largest and most beloved jazz festival, it has the brute force of the american film industry exporting films in our cinemas by the thousand, it has a deep understanding of racism towards its own french population, it has the actual minstrelsy history, all the elements are here to clearly understand what blackface is. Not knowing how hurtful blackface is, is a choice. It's not historical circumstances.

Quebec cultural elite can't pretend to be assailed by american and canadian culture and use that excuse to bar religious garments in public service as to self preserve AND suddenly be ignorant of one the most significant aspects of american culture.

On a slightly unrelated note, I remember reading Tintin au Congo as an eight year-old at the Bibliothèque de Côte-des-Neiges and it was a perfectly normal, educational thing to do at the time.

I never read that Tintin when I was a kid (for whatever reason, I didn't like Tintin as a kid) but I did read a lot of Astérix and there was the African character on the pirate ship which was basically the comic book equivalent of black face. I wonder what black kids who read Astérix thought of that character?

Only woke dude on that pirate ship imo

His argument is that English Canada is more Americanized than Quebec. Insofar as much of ROC culture is essentially indistinguishable from American culture (a typical Québécois claim), it more readily parses blackface as inherently racist.

I realize that's the argument. The logical twists required to support it are doing my head in, though.

So much Quebec punditry and social media is about finding excuses for racism and not owning up to the mistakes.

(I’ll soon be done with these rants)

Tbf I think it's fair to say that English Canada occupies a middle ground between Quebec and the US in this regard. It deems blackface highly offensive, but nowhere near as much as in the US (imagine a Dem candidate in Trudeau's shoes right now), and certainly more than in Quebec where it just elicits a collective shrug. So the claim that there are contextual gradations doesn't seem beyond the pale to me. Like I said, what I find unacceptable is the implication that Quebec is ultimately right not to give much of a fuck, which is why we need more articles like Isabelle Hachey's in La Presse.

xp

Tbf I think it's fair

lol I need to stop using 'tbf'.

Yeah, that sounds fair and, as noted above, I don't even consider Trudeau's past actions unforgivable.

Maybe I'm being uncharitable, but Thériault comes across as saying '…and this is fine, so deal with it, anglos!', which just stems from most annoying navel-gazing persecution complex imaginable, especially with Legault at the helm and the motherfucking Loi 21.

ours is a two-party system in all but name

Although I'm not satisfied with our electoral system, it is true that we frequently have minority governments with multi-party confidence and supply arrangements or occasionally coalitions and that multiple parties govern at the provincial level. Are there any countries that actually have something that could be described as a stable multi-party 'system' with regards to the head of government, i.e. where the position of head of government (President, PM, Chancellor, ...) regularly rotates between more than two consistent parties? I've asked this elsewhere and not got an answer. Most countries I can think of have two main governing parties with other parties mostly serving as coalition partners. When a third party wins government, it is usually either a one- or two-term flash in the pan or the beginning of a new two-party system.

I don't think I really understand French parties at all, though.

(And actually, a lot of the cases I thought of where there are not two consistent governing parties come close to being one-governing-party systems with occasional interlopers, like Sweden or Japan. Canada is maybe somewhere between this and a two-party system tbh?)

Are there any countries that actually have something that could be described as a stable multi-party 'system' with regards to the head of government, i.e. where the position of head of government (President, PM, Chancellor, ...) regularly rotates between more than two consistent parties?

Not for the head of government (though see below), but Australia has only had a Prime Minister with a majority once since 1996, and currently has 12 parties represented in the Senate. It's been very unstable for a decade, though!

There's a sooort-of two-party system inasmuch as since 1925, the balance of power in the Lower House has swung between the Labor Party, and a formal coalition of whichever the largest right-wing party is at the time, and whichever the largest farmers'-rights party is at the time. (Since 1998, there has been a coalition of three, with a single-state right-wing-farmers'-rights party added to the mix.

Exceptions are in 1931, when a new right-wing party formed a minority government, before establishing their coalition next time, and 2010, when Labor formed a minority with the support of three independents and one Green.

Since the 1950s, the Senate has traditionally had additional representation, often holding a balance of power, by a left-wing party or two (as well as independents). This largely came from single-party lower-house voters who would vote differently in the upper house on the "keep the bastards honest" principle. In the 50s and 60s this was the Democratic Labor Party, in the 70s and 80s they were replaced by the Australian Democrats, the Nuclear Disarmament Party had some minor action in the 80s, and since 1990 the Greens have been a fluctuating force (becoming more of a middle-class generalist party than a "stop woodchipping" party as the Democrats withered, and the Labor party shifted more and more right-wing.)


Currently the Labor party has 69 seats, and the Liberal (read: tory) party has 45, but by the terms of the formal coalition, the leader of the Libs gets to be PM, and the leader of the larger of the two farmer's parties gets to be deputy, and acting PM when the PM is overseas. So we frequently have the head of a party with 10 (out of 151) seats in Parliament as the PM.

We also have not had an election where the resulting PM served a full three-year term since 2004: in 2010, 2013, 2015 and 2018, the ruling party or larger coalition member has undergone a civil war and kicked out the PM, replacing them with another MP.

I mean, the PM has been either Liberal or Labor for the last 50 years, right? That's what I'm asking about, really; Canada has had various parties come and go too. I'm genuinely curious if there are any cases where the PM could e.g. be Liberal, Labor, or Green, and all three parties regularly take turns heading the government over the course of decade. It seems like people ultimately gravitate towards a binary.

Liberal or Labor except that multiple times a year, it will be a Nat. In a Westminster system, of course, the PM doesn't have many powers.

oops (Since 1998 2008, there has been a coalition of three btw

would italy count?

a stable multi-party 'system' with regards to the head of government

We've got a boatload of different parties in Romania, and they do alternate somewhat (with the notable exception of the ever-ubiquitous Social Democratic Party, ex-'communists' who are in fact a Trojan Horse that does not stand for any left-wing values and whose sole characteristic feature is corruption) but I suspect that this wide array of electoral choices reflects the country's relative instability more than anything.

There's been prime ministers from four different parties in Denmark in the last 50 years. But I don't really think the prime minister position is what's most impacted by a multi-party system, it's more about the different constellations of minority governments being able to govern.

Romania post-89 and Italy post-92 might count, although I would need to be convinced regarding stability in both cases. Based on Wikipedia, Denmark's PM has mostly been Social Democrat or Venstre since WW2 (and exclusively since 93), with two exceptions, one of whom was PM for three years? (11 years of Conservative People's Party does count for something.) I do think that weakening the stranglehold of a couple of party leaders would be a good thing, which could come from greater empowerment of MPs, greater empowerment of smaller parties, or both. It does seem like we'd very possibly still end up in the situation of having to hope for a 'lesser evil' of two main leaders as our head of government (the context in which the comment was made that I responded to), regardless of electoral system. I do find it interesting that any type of democratic system does seem to gravitate towards a binary. I don't know exactly why that should be the case - in principle, it should possible for a polity to organize itself around e.g. the four quadrants of the Political Compass or any number of other sorts of groupings - but it seems widespread.

I think the reason that most countries end up with a two party system is that people tend to vote against a party just as much as they vote for a party and this means that they will often end up voting for whichever party they think has the best shot at beating whichever the party they want to vote against, which makes it very difficult for a third party to gain any ground. I think for a lot of people, when voting for a third party you take the risk of splitting the vote on "your side" and handing over power to the other side.

At least this is what I feel is happening in the Canada and U.S.

already feeling like the brownface scandal isn't moving the needle much

i feel like this being released by the party that has demonized refugees/immigrants/muslims/thegays has taken a lot of the bang of it.

In other news, climate change skepticism appears to be on the rise:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-survey-suggests-canadian-trust-in-science-may-be-eroding/

About one-third felt scientists were influenced by government agendas. Another third thought science has been swayed by corporate agendas.

Are these supposed to be incorrect views?

i feel like this being released by the party that has demonized refugees/immigrants/muslims/thegays has taken a lot of the bang of it.

I half-wondered if it was released by the Liberals: Tories can't go after him without looking like hypocrites and inviting scrutiny of their record. NDP risk looking like politically correct scolds if they go after it too hard. Nationalists in Quebec, otherwise sworn enemies of the Liberals, rush to defend him. Everyone starts talking about Trudeau's record on immigration and multiculturalism. Probably unlikely but an idle thought. Afaict, my brown-skinned friends or family who have commented on it mostly seem to think it's a bogus issue, fwiw.

NDP on track to lose most to all of their QC seats, acc. to Grenier?: https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/poll-tracker/canada/ . That saddens me a little, esp since their platform is probably much better than it was last time around.

Even the Bloc is polling better. And the cons are currently in second place. :(

Is this mostly over Singh's religious symbol? I listened to a brutal interview with him on Radio-Canada a week or so ago where Singh kept trying to talk about the health and survival of the country as opposed to the party while the interviewer kept coming back to "OK, but you can't do anything about that if you don't have any MPs".

I guess the NDP's presence in Quebec only stemmed from an election when Jack Layton was the only major party leader who spoke good French and grew up in Quebec so this might just be a return to normal?

Likely a bit of both, but predominantly the former. Most Quebecers are in favour of Bill 21 at the moment…

:(

Libs and NDP are neck-to-neck in my riding, which has been the NDP's for years:

http://canada.qc125.com/districts/24039f.htm

Fingers crossed…

odds of winning for my riding are currently LPC: >99%

Wow, they list only a single Ontario riding as "NDP-leaning".

http://canada.qc125.com/districts/ontario.htm#list

:(((

Those numbers are garbage. There likely has not been any polling done for many individual ridings. Must be some algorithm based on the last election plus the current federal or provincial polls.

Probably true

It says on the website that it's "a statistical model of electoral projections based on opinion polls, electoral history of Canadian provinces and demographic data".

They have the liberals with a good lead in my riding, but from what I can tell they are getting trounced by the NDP in the lawn sign war.

blaming quebec for the plummeting NDP seems like bad logicking: the whole country has reacted listlessly to their current communication strategy and leadership.
the big difference is that unlike in other parts of the country (where leftists' only other alternative is the greens or the liberals), in Quebec there is another option - albeit one that advocates for a new form of systemic racism.

That site has popular NDP encumbents here in BC losing to neophyte tories. Not likely, My prediction is that the NDP will do fine and end up with close to 50 seats.

How is the Bloc a leftist alternative?

Lucien Bouchard introduced Quebec to austerity.

If you don’t have separatists sentiments, you have no good reason to vote Bloc. Quebec is stuck with the same alternatives.

NDP is losing in Quebec because Quebec progressives are happy with Trudeau and the Liberals and the keynesian policies.

Reading over the BQ platform, they are a little more progressive on some issues than I expected. Still, a lot of their proposals boil down to devolving federal powers to the provincial government of Quebec (anything that effects the environment or land of Quebec, the CRTC; the imo ridiculous demand to be able to withdraw from national programs with full compensation and no conditions) - esp with the current QC government, I see no reason to believe that any of this would result in more progressive/left-leaning policies.

if you don't think the Bloc are left-wing (in a canadian political context) then i don't know what you're thinking

Sund4r - the evidence for that is exactly what you're quoting. Almost everything that doesn't fall into your devolution category (or cultural protectionism/secularism) is... a left-wing policy.

and if you read the CAQ's policy platform you might also be surprised by their progressivism on several issues

on economic and environmental issues, the quebec population is at least 45 degrees (if not 90) to the left of the rest of the country

not that i'll vote for them this time

Sund4r - the evidence for that is exactly what you're quoting. Almost everything that doesn't fall into your devolution category (or cultural protectionism/secularism) is... a left-wing policy.

A lot of the platform falls into those categories, though!