Down With the Sickness: Canadian Politics 2022

one day I would love someone to explain to me why some ontario cities vote liberal federally and some vote (or used to vote!) NDP

Ottawa and Toronto are comparatively affluent and educated multicultural cities, with an especially high number of immigrants in Toronto's case and a high level of bilingualism in Ottawa's case, which are traditional Liberal bases. Obviously Ottawa is also home to a large number of federal public servants, who tend to have Liberal leanings for obvious reasons. The NDP tends to have a stronger base in poorer areas, cities with large unionized blue-collar workforces, and First Nations communities, so they traditionally have more of a stronghold in cities like Windsor, Hamilton, and Oshawa, and in Northern Ontario. (The more bilingual parts of Northern Ontario lean a little more Liberal.)

Ottawa Centre goes between Liberal and NDP. You typically see NDP signs more in the lower income parts of Centretown or in the neighbouthoods closer to the two universities and a sea of red in the bourgeois residential areas around Island Park ime.

It's my off the cuff explanation anyway.

thank you! that is exactly what I wanted to know, I'm ignorant about the demographics

I see Sloly is spelled Sloly--listening to the radio on the way home I was thinking, "Couldn't possibly be Slowly, could it?"

To those in Ottawa: is he being made the fall guy, or is this deserving?

It was/is a policing failure and he was Chief of Police so idk whose fall he would be taking tbh. This, from CTV News's chief news anchor, sounds consistent with what Sloly himself was saying in the regular livestreamed board meetings, and it was the wrong approach. It seems fairly evident that the trucks should have never been allowed to enter the city's core in the first place, something that could have been achieved with simple roadblocks, as regular residents figured out:

Peter Sloly firmly believed in waiting out the protesters. As they were digging in, he told people around him that a stronger enforcement move by @OttawaPolice could lead to a January 6th style confrontation and that lives would be lost #ottnews #OttawaOccupied #onpoli

— Graham Richardson (@grahamctv) February 15, 2022

Well, for some percentage of the country, I'm guessing, he'd be seen as taking the fall for Trudeau and/or Ford. I'm not at all saying that's fair--that's why I'm asking--but that would be the perception, I think.

No one except residents, Harden, and downtown-area city councillors has come off very well afaic. That's why I said Sloly's resignation is a start.

But if we consider what Windsor's police force, who serve a smaller and poorer city, were able to do on the Ambassador Bridge, and look at the trucks that are still blockading our downtown, it's clear that something went wrong at the level of policing.

Among the signs I photographed last night: "IT IS NOT KNOWING THAT YOUR DOOR IS ALWAYS OPEN AND YOUR PATH IS FREE TO WALK ON" (Glen Campbell??) - on the side of a truck that also has a large poppy with "they deserve more than one day"; 'BE ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY - REMEMBER YOUR OATH" draped along the fronts of several trucks parked on Wellington at Bank. This whole thing remains surreal.

I went as far as Sparks St. this afternoon. Wellington in front of Parliament looked like it was still a shitshow.

It’s strange to walk downtown and feel like people I pass are mentally filing me as protester or not protester. I feel like I’m getting a lot more cautious looks than normal. I'm definitely doing it too.

oof, this hurts

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/threats-close-stella-luna-gelato-cafe-after-owners-name-appears-in-givesendgo-data-leak

wow imagine if Martin Luther King got arrested https://t.co/VYJSyj1NKX

— David Weigel (@daveweigel) February 15, 2022

is tammy giuliani any relation to rudy? pretty disingenuous statement in any case

I don't support the threats to Stella Luna at all but Karen gave a substantially larger donation AFTER the GoFundMe had been shut down and her first donation was returned, in the second week of the occupation. She clearly knew what she was supporting; her claims to the contrary make no sense.

Happy Goat is in the same block and has much better coffee and snacks. I'm not a huge ice cream guy but there's gotta be better.

she just loves giving to charity!

I liked the pistachio gelato. :(

Mooshu seems to have found itself on the right side of history.

The backlash against Stella Luna on social media was swift and intense, with many pointing out that a rival creamery, Mooshu Ice Cream on Bank Street, had to close because anti-mask demonstrators threatened its staff.

Threatened and assaulted, from their story, a day before Stella Luna lady made her larger donation: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/moo-shu-ice-cream-employee-assaulted-ottawa-1.6341207 . They reported a hate crime.

I actually missed this part on first read - Karen donated to the convoy despite the fact that they were harassing her employees!:

Giuliani said the demonstrators had caused problems at her shops too, entering without masks and trying to force confrontations.

“I notified the staff not to get into any confrontation. I said, ‘Your job is to serve food and drinks, not get blasted by someone trying to make a point.'”

is givesendgo leak still available somewhere?

Four AB protesters charged with conspiracy to murder RCMP officers: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/coutts-protest-charges-laid-court-appearance-bail-1.6352482

Wow

https://www.castanet.net/news/Penticton/359896/Protesters-showed-up-at-Southern-Okanagan-Secondary-school-Friday

“She was arguing with [ Navrit ] about the protest. The way it escalated was that the lady in the video said something like ‘those truckers bring all your goods over, so you better care,'” said Kai.

Navrit responded to the woman in the video by saying, “You think I care?” and the woman responded with “Well you should care, I have a right to be in the country, do you?”

Navrit, a young Punjabi woman, questioned the woman’s comment, and asked “Are you telling me to go back to my country?”

The woman said “yes” and began yelling at Navrit for calling her “racist."

The two went back and forth yelling at each other, until the blonde woman called Navrit a "stupid c**t."

At one point, one of the students yells: "you're literally arguing with children."

Full thread from CBC journalist on the incident, with a link to his interview:

CBC has learned that aggressive protesters were allowed to confront children on school property in the South Okanagan after police and school officials failed to intervene. The result was a racist verbal attack on a student.

— Chris Walker (@ChrisWalkerCBC) February 15, 2022

Why the hell were they protesting a school?

This is messed up:

I had to read this paragraph literally three times. This poor kid. https://t.co/XaTTqCu4Fo pic.twitter.com/VFBVeTBhem

— Amarnath Amarasingam (@AmarAmarasingam) February 16, 2022

Jesus. Hopefully that child's mother (I'm guessing/hoping the wording "and his wife" is intentional) isn't a chump

i wonder if that's the same guy i read about a few weeks ago. couldn't give enough of a shit about his own kid to get vaccinated and thinks he's the victim. these people are all pieces of shit. that's why they're harassing kids at school, because they're cowardly pieces of shit that need to bully someone smaller than them. fuck all of those pieces of shit.

I heard a sound bite from a protester the other day on the radio who referred to "Justin Trudeau or whoever is pulling his strings." Like, wtf? "Pulling his strings"? Like, who, Big Pharma? The Jews?

Hm, so Menard has so far been very good on this. (I found out about the march last weekend because of him - and he's not even my councillor.) He does think that Sloly is being made a scapegoat for Watson's failures, although he also thinks Sloly should have resigned.

URGENT #Ottnews! Watch out for the Mayor today. He and #WatsonClub want to force the takeover of OPSB. He has taken ZERO accountability for the total loss of control of our city and instead legitimized occupiers, and scapegoated the first Black Chief of Police. #OttawaOccupation

— Shawn Menard (@ShawnMenard1) February 16, 2022

Pictures from Monday night: https://photos.app.goo.gl/me1ZPuN8cEhBDg5m9

From Jan 30, the first weekend: https://photos.app.goo.gl/me1ZPuN8cEhBDg5m9

they need the conspiracy aspect to feel special and smarter than everyone else. like Tom Hanks in a mashup of The Da Vinci Code and Dukes of Hazard.
xpost wow wtf

My ward's councillor Zooming in to today's City Council meeting from Kent St (a few blocks from my apt):

As the mayor lies to council about the success of his capitulation deal, councillor @cmckenney is joining the meeting live from occupied Kent pic.twitter.com/5ONUbo4KhF

— Kiavash Najafi (@KiavashNajafi) February 16, 2022

Last night's city council meeting was some Game of Thrones shit.

Ottawa sits under three states of emergency (municipal, federal, and provincial).

At a city council meeting tonight @cmckenney tells Mayor @JimWatsonOttawa “I have lost all confidence in you as a Mayor.”

He responds “thank you,” and calls the next councillor to speak.

— Marieke Walsh (@MariekeWalsh) February 17, 2022

Watson - who has been a disaster through this whole fiasco - wanted to replace the entire police oversight board w people loyal to him. Two members resigned in protest, incl the 1st black councillor. Council totally divided into urban vs suburban/rural factions. A lot of tears and furious recriminations. At least they kept an overtly racist piece of shit from the piece of shit suburb where my parents live off the board.

For more background on how Watson and his team have been operating, look at the LRT disaster - the city built a commuter system, replacing many v functional bus routes, that has been completely ineffective, with trains regularly derailing and not even built to handle snow. Turns out SNC-Lavalin had got the bid without even meeting minimum technical requirements. Diane Deans, who tried to raise questions about the technical evaluations in council, is the councillor who was just removed as chair of the police board.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/how-we-got-to-snc-lavalin-decision-1.5459189

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/mayor-watson-backs-trillium-line-procurement-after-documents-reveal-weaknesses-with-snc-lavalin-proposal

Did you see this clip? https://www.reddit.com/r/ottawa/comments/su8e9k/catherine_mckenney_joined_todays_city_council/

According to the comments, Watson has a habit of misgendering McKenney

*commuter train

I posted another clip from when they Zoomed in from Kent St. but that's a good one. They'll have my vote for mayor in the fall. Idk if they can win.

Amazing moment when Menard quoted Barrhaven councillor Jan Harder on crime from 09: "The problem arises when a large group of -- I'm going to say it -- non-whites comes into our community looking to cause trouble."
Her response was to essentially invoke procedure and say something to the effect that those comments were in a police report, which was why she hadn't been formally asked to rescind them at the time, without giving either an explanation or apology. I was just glad Watson's cronyism wasn't strong enough to get her on the board in place of Meehan.

Oh shit, reading the news now, looks like Meehan also resigned after I stopped watching. Hope Harder doesn't get on there despite losing that vote.

66% national support for Emergencies Act, acc to Maru opinion poll (don't know this firm): https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5a17333eb0786935ac112523/t/620d9994ac49674e50dd99d6/1645058455817/Emergencies+17+02+22.pdf

A coworker stormed into my office today raving about Trudeau - he’s freezing the bank accounts of anyone who donated to the protest - I hate his fucking guts - if I had nothing to lose I’d drive across the country to shoot him, etc. I listened in stunned silence.

Windsor mayor received a bomb threat from a woman upset about pandemic restrictions. Multiple people arrested on conspiracy to murder in relation to the Alberta border blockade. & so on. What is it about Trudeau and about the pandemic that is driving otherwise normal people into this frenzy - that they’d rather commit murder than get a perfectly good vaccine and/or wear a mask? My hippie ex has travelled from Montreal to Ottawa to live among the protesters, constantly posts about how it’s nothing but peace and love and that the media is the enemy of the people. I think we’re in the middle of the early stages of a mass delusions/madness of crowds type event here. Or in the beginning of the middle stages? I wonder, as Germany collectively lost its mind in the 20s and 30s, did it feel like this? I’m genuinely weirded out & somewhat frightened by all this.

On an Ottawa downtown street corner. pic.twitter.com/q8Ye42zDOD

— Jorge Barrera (@JorgeBarrera) February 17, 2022

I feel like loudly ranting about shooting the prime minister in the middle of your workplace would result in, at the very least, a sit down with HR.

What is it about Trudeau and about the pandemic that is driving otherwise normal people into this frenzy - that they’d rather commit murder than get a perfectly good vaccine and/or wear a mask

I would venture that part of it is the same as in the US, that rich liberals in power cause cultural reaction in ways singular to them.

The other bit is that so much of the fraud of modern life has gotten a certain subset of people having such a reduced horizon that only feelings of personal comfort in that moment is the priority. So anything that could possibly intrude on that, be it quarantines or disrupted supply chains or being told to wear a mask or even encountering people different from yourselves, causes anguish and reaction that has to go somewhere.

"Canadian style tyranny" pic.twitter.com/oOWUimVNfl

— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) February 16, 2022

What's particularly galling about the claims of "tyranny" and "dictatorship" is the extent to which the occupation and blockades have been tolerated and accommodated so far.

On that note, though, Tamara Lich and Chris Barber were arrested:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/tamara-lich-chris-barber-arrested-ottawa-1.6355960