Dynasty, s3: Canadian Politics 2018

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?

Which - imo, Ontario Liberals have done a lot right and a lot wrong and a credible left alternative could be worthwhile!

Yes, exactly. My sense is provincial NDP have been so bloodless for so long that the slight left tack by the Libs has left them shaken.

I thought this was a pretty good overview of a strange blind spot in Canadian politics: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/atwal-sikh-trudeau-conservatives-1.4559830

Wow @ http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/alberta-government-drug-funding-1.3395871

Waiting around for this PC result, which will decide how tricky my vote will be in the election (i.e., whether or not Ford wins). How in the hell can you be late announcing the results when no actual voting took place today?

1) Malfunctioning voting machine--surprise; 2) Half-a-percent difference, presumably between Ford and Elliott.

Why are they fussing then? Doesn't that mean they have to go to a second ballot?

Love this photo (from last year).

http://tvo.org/sites/default/files/blog-thumbnails/Brian_and_Caroline_Mulroney.jpg

They're saying she's last on the first ballot.

finding this very confusing

I think Rob Ford will be our largest province's next premier, which might pause Canadian smugness about Trump for about 45 seconds

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