Dynasty, s3: Canadian Politics 2018

Nova Scotia mayor comes out

Glad now it's 'in all of us command' instead of 'in all our sons command'.

i've been parsing that line wrong all along. i always thought the patriot love was in "thy sons' command". possessive sons', command as a noun.

Wait, I've read it that way my whole life. It only just occurred to me that it makes more sense if "command" is a verb and "sons" is plural. Speaking to Canada in the imperative still seems odd, though.

Yep, me too.

I think I probably did think about it once or twice and then forgot. If the original line was "thou dost in us command" as per [Removed Illegal Link], that is a much better line than either the one we grew up with or this new one. Are we also going to take the cross out of the French lyrics? Lol j/k.

https://globalnews.ca/news/4002268/oh-canada-originally-gender-neutral/

I keep trying to imagine this happening to the White House and failing: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/24-sussex-drive-trudeau-not-living-1.4511732

This seems like a good history of the anthem: https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/o-canada/

In The Common School Book of Vocal Music, published by the Educational Book Company of Toronto in 1913, the original line "True patriot love thou dost in us command" was changed to "True patriot love in all thy sons command." This particular change was also included in a version published by Delmar in 1914, and in all versions printed thereafter. There is no evidence as to why the change to “sons” was made, although it is worth noting that the women’s suffrage movement was at its most militant and controversial around 1913, and by 1914 and 1916 there was an enormous surge of patriotism during the First World War, at a time when only men could serve in the armed forces.

I figured the 'thy sons' version probably took off because of the war, but didn't connect it to the suffragettes.

Up to the middle of the 20th century, public discussion relating to the anthem, evidenced by letters to the editor in the country’s major newspapers, tended to revolve around the appropriateness of the phrase “stand on guard for thee” and the controversy associated with the tune’s perceived similarity to Mozart’s “March of the Priests.”

My view, having had to listen to the damn song every morning for years, is that we ban it forever and enjoy some peace and quiet.

today in "not The Onion"

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/world/justin-trudeau-interrupts-woman-during-qa-to-tell-her-to-use-the-word-peoplekind-not-mankind-a3759316.html

(also, "peoplekind" is hilariously clunky. why not "humankind"?)

he is such a high school teacher

Me cause human contains the word “man.” Sexist.

Srsly, though, what a peoplegling of the language.

Stupid phone. *because

“Me cause earthquake! Cave dilettante strong!”

I'm gonna start using hupeoplekind

so inclusive

i kinda think trudeau was kidding actually

I think he meant it as a bit of light ribbing. He wasn't mansplaining. The full question is at 1:06:38 here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=3988&v=JDAYH0GSDWs

(also, "peoplekind" is hilariously clunky. why not "humankind"?)

"Humanity" is a perfectly good actual English word but it does seem like ribbing (someone who was asking a very long and convoluted question) in context.

I'm not a biologist but I'm p sure "maternal love" is not the actual definition of "mitochondria" btw.

good old "people" is fine

though high school teacher will knock off points for being ambiguous by using the word "people" (in chicken scratch along the margin: who? what people? be specific. -5)

Yeah, my Apple Oxford dictionary defines "mankind", "humanity", and "people" almost exactly the same way: "human beings considered collectively".

"dumb joke" says trudeau

also "person up" is kind of funny

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/justin-trudeau-says-peoplekind-remark-was-a-dumb-joke/article37889426/

The media's being obtuse on this one. It was pretty clearly a joke if you watched the full clip.

yeah it was a joke and the person he was talking to was a dumbass making a stupid point iirc?

Totally. I'm guessing that most people probably don't have the patience to sit through her entire 'question' so they want to get mad at either political correctness or mansplaining instead.

I am glad for any chance to dunk on JT so I'm a bit disappointed it was undeserved for once tbh

Anyway, this is distracting from the Philippines helicopter sale which is what should really be the subject of national discussion (and won't be)

the trudeau audience member question was thinly-veiled proselytizing for World Mission Society Church of God. i'd call it a cult. you can google it and decide for yourself.

so we all buying some BC wine this week to show where we stand in the big trade war?

With all the press he's getting, it just occurred to me that Jordan Peterson might make a more effective CPC leader than Andrew Scheer (or possibly anyone); then it occurred to me that the CPC and Peterson might realize this soon enough; then I felt ill.

Apparently he had considered running for conservative leadership (can't remember if it was provincially in Ontario or federally) but decided his work is too important or whatever - aka he's making a lot of money doing what he's doing and knows that political leadership would be more taxing and less lucrative than writing self-help manuals.

Sund4r, I'm going through a bit of a rough patch at the moment and today felt a little lighter. Until I read your comment.

where do canadian olympic stories go?

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/olympics/doping-controversy-leads-to-verbal-spat-between-canadian-russian-at-olympics/article37896346/

^ this is cringey

Acquittal in the Colten Boushie killing.

I'm trying to follow the details of Stanley's version. For it to have gone the way he says, all of these have to be true: a) he mistook how many bullets he put in his gun, b) he pulled the trigger more times than the number of bullets he thought he put in, c) for no reason, he believed his wife was under the truck, d) for no reason, he pointed his gun at Colten Boushie's head, e) he had an exceedingly rare hang fire of more than a fraction of a second. Practically any shooting could be given a story like that.

I also don't know why this wasn't pressed further, i.e. had it been a hang fire with the barrel extended, the casing should have stayed in the gun, I think? (I don't have a good sense of how a semi-automatic pistol works so don't know what weight to give this):

Burge asking how if the barrel was extended, was there a spent casing in the vehicle. If the gun looked like that, with the slide locked back, Burge contends, the casing should not have been ejected.

— Charles Hamilton (@_chamilton) February 5, 2018

Has anyone been following the story of Morgane Oger, VP of the BC NDP, publicly requesting the identity of a woman who carried an anti-transgenderism sign and publicly contemplating a human rights complaint? I feel like there might be a legitimate free speech issue here but it is hard for me to find information on it outside social media and blogs that have a strong slant, such as Feminist Current (Meghan Murphy, CW for trans-exclusionary feminism). Afaik, the party itself has not commented officially.

Yeah. Know all about it. Murphy and her cohort of sock puppets are transphobic bullies. Nicely aligned with a large group of anti-trans right-wing evangelists who also hate Morgane because of the gender/sex Ed program they are trying to ban from schools out in loservelle BC. Morgane’s a very vocal supporter/activist in the BC school system. Lovely bunch.

A lot of the names on the “open letter” (groan) are fake, anonymous or in one case fraudulent.

And as probably highest profile trans person in Canada Morgan’s a huge target for these bozos.

I don't think it's at all clear that Oger is calling for the woman to be punished for hate speech...I think she wants to start a dialogue, which is generous of her

https://imgur.com/a/hflMa

https://imgur.com/gallery/Yt6i3

I might agree with a Conservative senator?: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2018/02/13/iranian-canadian-professor-died-by-suicide-in-tehran-lawmakers-confirm.html

I don't think it's at all clear that Oger is calling for the woman to be punished for hate speech...I think she wants to start a dialogue, which is generous of her

Fair point but where will Oger take this if the woman is unconvinced by the dialogue?

tbh i didn't read up to the beginning of the twitter thread, just the link and the wonderful arguments after, so Oger says she may reluctantly consider a human rights tribunal complaint...which I hope she doesn't

You can't make a complaint against an individual. The context is that the woman with the anti-trans sign was one of a handful of people who attended the Women's March to protest a trans-woman being invited speak on the main stage (not Morgane Oger though she was present.) You could theoretically make a HR complaint against the organisers of the march for not providing a safe environment free from hate speech. Oger's is not going to do that since the organisers are not anti-trans types. Maybe the woman was there as part of some kind of organisation, so a complaint could be made there. But I doubt Oger would bother as she's otherwise said a few times she's reserving her activism to systemic problems ie. not going after outliers like these TERFs.

Not to say it's not concerning or serious but it blew up because of Twitter and it's kinda a social media mess. The march was otherwise a big success.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-speech-indigenous-rights-1.4534679

So the verdict in the trial over the killing of Colten Boushie has spurred the liberals to do something, what it will be remains to be seen.

There are no second acts in Canadian lives. Unless you really hurry.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/pc-leadership-committee-approves-patrick-brown-candidacy-1.4544843

I hope he wins, if only because it would be the most hilariously pointless outcome

this ontario PC race is a hilarious clusterfuck, but if 2016 is any indication hilarious clusterfucks will lead to Premier Doug Ford

Totally possible. The Ontario PCs have proven themselves to be good at losing elections, though.

A lot of the new federal budget sounds like it might be good: investment in conservation, rural broadband, reviewing dismissed sexual assault cases in particular. It'll all depend on what actually gets done with the money, though. Still seems a little incredible to remember that the same party were vicious deficit hawks just 20 years ago.

I'm mostly just sad at what a shambles the provincial and federal NDP are. I would be taking joy in how badly the Tories are fucking up otherwise.

I can cut the federal party some slack given that Singh has only been leader for five months; I do expect some real leadership from him, especially on pharmacare. I'll admit that I often drift out of Ontario provincial politics over the last couple of years but I honestly don't really have much of a sense of what the Ontario NDP is about at this point (other than wanting to distance themselves from Bob Rae's government of over 20 years ago, and for the wrong reasons). My sense is that both parties had been moving significantly to the centre and then were caught off guard when the Liberals tacked a little to the left?

For the curious, a good high-level overview of recent Canadian right-wing fuckery courtesy of Luke Savage:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/18/toronto-doug-ford-reveals-canadian-rights-disdain-for-the-charter-of-rights

Depressing. The amount of people who casually accept that might makes right is higher than we like to think.

The Canadian "left" (such as it is) has never been prepared to handle this and it'll continue to get steamrolled until or unless it grows a fucking backbone. I'm not holding my breath.

[extended string of violent epithets redacted]

anyway they passed back-to-work legislation this morning

Going back to the ROC francophones' situation there's a rather significant segment of the separatist movement that made ignoring the pleas and concerns of the ROC francophone one of their core values. Some, not all, prominent Quebec intellectual separatists have made it clear that ROC francophones are none of their concern. Those minorities would be some sort of lost cause to be used as a warning for the situation of french in North America rather than an opportunity to promote the french language within the ROC. All in all, it is kind of staggering that over the last 5 decades so little has been done for those ROC Francophones, by both their home provinces AND Quebec. Now, just look at Legault doing fuck all to amend the situation, just like the PQ, just like the PLQ did nothing to really help those people. In some intellectual milieux, including the press, the debate of whether citizens of Quebec should call themselves French-Canadians or Quebecois have been reignited; to me that is just proof of very timid solidarity Quebecois have for the ROC francophones (and other francophones of North America).

I could be wrong but I'm not really sure if budget cuts in Quebec would be met with deafening cries of racism in ROC, even ones that targeted anglophone services

― Locked in silent monologue, in silent scream (Sund4r), Monday, November 19, 2018 5:44 PM (one week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Oh boy it would. Quebec bashing has happened for much less (lol pastagate), thankfully.

Pastagate fits into this category, I think:

active government efforts to ... regulate where English or other languages can be used or taught

My suspicion is that English Canadians would regard a government doing something differently than a government not doing something.

Idk, though, I could be way off.

Sund4r, you may find this interesting: http://plus.lapresse.ca/screens/58c7800e-dafc-46a7-8575-08bcf0feb591__7C___0.html

I don't think that contradicts my point; I still think pastagate is an apples and oranges comparison to this. (Also, a quick Google search does turn up plenty of coverage in the English Ontario press abouot francophone protests concerning the Ford govt's budget cuts and cancellation of the French university, although most of it is more recent than Nov 20 tbf.) However, I do agree with the writer that funding minority institutions is an important way to respect those communities.

I will admit, though, that I'm not totally convinced that building a French university in Toronto was the greatest idea to begin with. Based on the 2016 census, out of ≈5.9M Toronto residents, ≈65.5K (1.11%) speak French as a first language, less than the number whose first language is Arabic (85K), Tamil (110K), or Tagalog (136K), let alone Mandarin (227K), Cantonese (≈248K), or Punjabi (171K). I do think it would make a lot of sense to build a French university here in Ottawa, where over 30% of the city lists French as their mother tongue and I use French all the time - far more comparable to the example of Montreal. (NB that there are no English universities or hospitals in Quebec City.) Whatever would be hypothetically done would have to be co-ordinated with the bilingual University of Ottawa, though, which is currently doing a pretty good job of providing education and services in French.

And even then, idk if an all-French university would necessarily serve francophones better than a bilingual one or if it would just serve to divide people further. Imo, McGill and Concordia can foster weirdly insular anglophone enclaves. Maybe we should be looking to expand French-language services at Carleton instead?

Totally riffing in the last post

Inaugurating a French-language university in the heart of Toronto is a gesture that would carry tremendous symbolic weight and that would go a long way towards further mending the historically fraught (i.e. hierarchical) relationship between anglophones and francophones, which remains a barely concealed wound in French-speaking Canada. Anything less is bound to be perceived as a sign or indifference, even contempt. It's hard not to feel like the linguistic majority just doesn't get it, and I say this as a non-native francophone.

Imo, McGill and Concordia can foster weirdly insular anglophone enclaves.

This is a valid concern, but I think that a) if you design the university from the ground up with this problem in mind, you could take pains to avoid repeating it and b) I don't know Toronto very well, but my impression is that you couldn't get by off campus only knowing French, unlike English/Montreal.

Yeah, b) is true for the same reason that the idea seemed unconvincing to me in the first place.

I assume part of the point of locating it in Toronto is to bring new francophone residents to the city and create more French-language infrastructure, not just to serve francophone people presently there. Whether it would actually draw students is something I hope they've done empirical analysis on. We don't want a tremendous symbolic gesture that fails in the application.

Tbh I've seen zero details about what this was supposed to look like, including what size student body they were expecting. I don't think it's impossible to imagine a way this could have worked though.

idk if an all-French university would necessarily serve francophones better than a bilingual one

This is essentially my very idealistic take on Canadian language politics in general, especially if you include "English" and "anglophone" as well. The cognitive benefits of bilingualism are well established afaict, and unlike my American friends putting their kids on waiting lists for Mandarin-immersion kindergartens in Oregon, there's a cultural/social framework for making bilingualism work in Canada--provided you can ignore decades of politics lol. The impression I get from my partner's students (almost all of whom are francophones at an anglophone uni) is that there's an appetite for bilingualism among younger quebecois. Or at least among the art students...

There is an 'appetite for bilingualism', but it's a one-way street.

Imo, McGill and Concordia can foster weirdly insular anglophone enclaves.

― Locked in silent monologue, in silent scream (Sund4r), Sunday, December 2, 2018 9:31 AM (four hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Francophones outside of the anglomontrealia are as responsible for this enclave feeling. And to be fair, there is so many more francophones (from all over the world, not just Quebec) at McGill/Concordia than anglophones in french universities.

Agreed that a new francophone Ontarian university need not be in Toronto of all places available.

just shaking my head while reading all of this tbh

like, the way this is being handled in canada is so wrong

https://globalnews.ca/news/4658188/fentanyl-china-canada-diplomatic-tensions/

“With the fentanyl crisis, and Vancouver being ground zero with imports from China paid with Bitcoin from unregulated exchanges, the U.S. government is concerned about Vancouver,” Duhaime said. “The fact that Vancouver has emerged as a safe haven for proceeds of crime is even more concerning.”

New thread: Open for Business: Canadian Politics 2019