Defenestrate Them All: Canadian Politics 2021

A new type of Shawinigan handshake

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/chretien-nuclear-waste-project-1.5971996

Am I a bad parent if I’m not very concerned about small variances in co2 levels in schools? I mean, good ventilation is generally pretty important, but with covid it seems overly mobile air in the rooms is an actual hazard? (Thinking of all the inside restaurant transmission info that was circulating at the start of the pandemic that showed how hvac air currents moved it from one table of diners to others) - I’v been more concerned with their physical proximity to each other. Perhaps I am wrong about that though.

I had to laugh yesterday when, at my old school, there was a teacher sitting in a room with one other student; it was the "isolation room," where they put anyone who's not feeling well. This teacher has a good sense of humour, so I went up to her later and said something like, "Nice gig, where do I sign up?" It's like, this is the room where we keep the nuclear waste, we want you to stand guard over it.

The student will be just fine. I hope she is.

My kid got sent home because a kid in her “cohort” tested positive. So now everyone in her class and the outdoor play group is home for two weeks.

"Canada has been the top supplier of nuclear fuel for many years, and I have always thought that it is only proper that Canada should ultimately become the steward and guarantor of the safe storage of spent nuclear fuel after its first duty cycle," Chrétien wrote.

There is a certain logic to this but the secrecy and extra-governmental nature of it do seem strange, based on this report.

Yeah, seems potentially shady. He may have a point though - from a planetary, geological, perspective, would we rather this stuff is permanently stored in a bunker on the Pacific Rim, or in the stable Rick of the Canadian Shield.

Err stable rock.

https://www.hilltimes.com/2021/04/01/trudeau/291523

big polling lead for Trudeau

Is the stable Rick of the Canadian Shield Rick Moranis?

(Hansen and Mercer are disqualified as their origins are from outside the Shield zone)

You know what this thread needs? More Amir Attaran:

https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/2021-04-02/l-homme-qui-s-est-mis-a-dos-le-quebec.php

This is as close as we'll get to a villain origin story, it seems.

Fuck an Attaran, but calling Ezra Levant 'a right-wing commentator' without providing further context – especially since francophone audiences are less familiar with the man – is quite the euphemism. I also think the reference to Attaran's wife was uncalled for.

L’Université d’Ottawa, pourtant considérée comme le repaire ultime des wokes

Uh, by whom?

Isabelle Hachey, duh.

I don't even think it's as woke as Carleton!

I doubt she’s ever heard of it tbf.

As a native English speaker with a PhD, I got 5/10 on this quiz from the "Language Portal of Canada" on the use of pronouns in English: https://www.noslangues-ourlanguages.gc.ca/en/quiz/jeu-quiz-peaceable-pronouns1-eng

That reminds me of a statistic I read one time that 1% of all PhDs were illiterate.

wow that quiz is insane.I got 7/10 and I strongly object to the supposedly correct answer to number 8

As a non-native speaker with a PhD who has a bone to pick with this kind of anal prescriptivism regardless of language, I also got 5/10.

That reminds me of a statistic I read one time that 1% of all PhDs were illiterate.

who is this site possibly intended for? exercises like that are actively harmful for language learners imo

got 5/10. I guess I should stop saying I'm fluent in English.

To get 10/10 you need to be a non-native speaker who learned English through the ‘Language Portal of Canada’.

the pronoun must agree with the closer antecedent, father

What the fuck?

And because nurses can be male as well as female, the feminine pronoun her does not agree. The right answer is c) the.

Ugh, yes, thank you quiz, I know that nurses can be male, but all of the other questions were priming me to look for possessive pronouns. And what if, in context, I happen to know that all of the student nurses use 'she/her'?

I got 6/10.

Neither the children nor their father had his picture taken.

Why does gender inclusiveness suddenly fly out the window in favour of some obscure antecedent rule here, quiz?

wow that quiz is insane.I got 7/10 and I strongly object to the supposedly correct answer to number 8

exact same. also apparently canada has yet to learn about the singular "they/their".

who is this site possibly intended for?

My spouse is preparing to tutor a cousin's kid to get ready for an English board CEGEP in Gatineau - apparently, they linked this site.

Afaict, it seems to be based on a weird combination of old-fashioned quasi-Strunk & White grammatical prescriptivism with newfangled gender-woke linguistic prescriptivism that ties itself into knots to avoid having to use the singular "they" or "their".

It’s uncanny.

yeah combining two terrible prescriptivisms to create a monstrous pedantry. nobody would notice the supposed mistakes in speaking in just about all those example sentences, and many of the wrong sentences would be fine in formal writing as well

lol I’m illiterate too.

By the logic of their supposed antecedent rule, you would have to say "neither Jason nor Jennifer got her picture taken". I don't think I've ever heard a native speaker speak like that, nor do I recall seeing that type of construction in writing.

Or does the rule only apply to number? What do they do with gender?

going by the weird dictates of this quiz I would guess: "neither Jason nor Jennifer were one of the people who got their picture taken at the picture-taking location that we neglected to mention in the question part of the quiz"

btw I got 9/10 but only because I read y'all's posts first and knew what was going down. Even with that cheat, Q8's "ah, but you see the children are also male" got me

Question 8 doesn’t even say that they are male children though, I think? Some of the children could be female, but suddenly no one gives a fuck when the dad is the closest noun. Or something. Probably you all can’t even understand my incorrect sentences.

Sent it to an English lit PhD friend of mine. He’s a native speaker, and he also got 5/10. His ESL wife got 8/10.

L’Université d’Ottawa, pourtant considérée comme le repaire ultime des wokes

I have three diplomas from Concordia and i'd like a word please

Seriously.

Then again, there was this back in 2015:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/university-ottawa-yoga-cultural-sensitivity-1.3330441

with a BA in English lit, 6/10

4/10, this is the hardest I have ever done.

It's not like I think Canada is doing an exemplary job, but am I jealous of how the **UNITED STATES** handled / is handling Covid? Jesus christ no.

Btw, I think this is my issue with these kinds of comments I see sometimes making dire comparisons of our vaccination pace to the US's or UK's - vaccinations aren't an end in themselves; they're a response to a problem and part of an overall strategy. Ofc faster would be better but no, I don't think countries with 2x-3x our per capita death rate are better off; they probably do need to be vaccinated sooner.

(Another example, from a National Post writer):

Can now immediately tell Canadians from Americans on my Twitter feed. Americans my age are celebrating their second jab, planning to see friends & redownload dating apps. Canadians of all ages are miserable, heading into a 3rd “lockdown” and losing their minds.

— Sabrina Maddeaux (@SabrinaMaddeaux) April 1, 2021

(Tbf, an arts/lifestyle reporter)

I will never understand those who compare Canada with the US or feel jealous that the US has done X-thing better than Canada.

Despite the difficult ties and times the US gov't has bullied the Canadian gov't, I'm thankful the US is seeing a decline in Covid cases and is sending more vaccines to Canada. This can only be a good thing for neighbouring countries, especially ones that are bound to each other like the US and Canada.

im extremely jealous of americans rn

Same tbh. Doesn't have to be 100% rational.

I totally understand. I think there is a lot of jealousy and anger going around in Canada. There is a reason we are where we're at. Whatever happened to mandatory face coverings? The mandate was clearly not being followed enough, despite so many people saying they were. At least in BC, we can no longer use care homes as a scapegoat.

americans had it worse over the course of the pandemic and i don't envy them for that (they're currently at 0.15% of the population dead from covid vs 0.06% for us) but seeing them go full buckwild this summer will be rough

Being able to do everything from my apartment has mostly been pretty sweet tbh.