Open for Business: Canadian Politics 2019

sund4r, rob, everyone i do appreciate the time/tone you took to address me on this. the original point ("jagmeet singh is rich and privileged and yes we can sounds odd coming from him because of course he can") was out of line, i quickly realized, a bad faith reading of what he said, before i had watched the full victory speech, and trying to explain it without my full conviction didn't help and to continue, i'm arguing against misunderstandings of my poorly-expressed thoughts...

https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/jody-wilson-raybould-testimony-live

Wilson-Raybould started her testimony with a strong statement saying she there was a “consistent and sustained effort to seek to politically interfere” to secure a deferred prosecution agreement for SNC-Lavalin. Wilson-Raybould said it involved 11 people and ran from September until December of last year.

Wilson-Raybould said it is inappropriate for anyone in the government to press “the Attorney General on things he/she cannot take into account,” such as partisan political concerns.

Trudeau statement at 8 pm tonight.

I think that's probably it for Trudeau--direct link or not, and mitigated by the fact (if I understand this right) that he waived privilege to allow her to testify.

Geez

Katie T thinks it gives us cover in the business community and the legal community, and that it would allow the PM to say we are doing something. She was like “if Jody is nervous, we would of course line up all kinds of people to write OpEds saying that what she is doing is proper.”

Well that was super lame.

He didn't deny the "and I am an MP in Quebec – the member for Papineau" quote.

Just been reading a short thread on this. I like how it ends.

10. Last detail. Jody Wilson-Raybould's father was an Aboriginal activist who butted heads with Justin Trudeau's father. Here they are bantering. Bill Wilson tells Pierre Trudeau that his daughter Jody wants to be PM one day. Maybe she will be? https://t.co/RNq3Q3ihVx

— Ezra Levant 🍁 (@ezralevant) February 28, 2019

I suggest you look up Ezra Levant first (I assume you're not familiar with him).

Yes, and? It was a comment on the end of the thread, how son and daughter are locked in years later.

Would you feel comfortable posting a Tommy Robinson tweet in the British politics thread?

A google told me he was a 'canadian media personality' which is not what Tommy Robinson is.

The thread seems mostly a recount of things that are happening. As it hasn't been reported much here I assume that isn't the full story so I also wanted to see if anyone disagreed with it.

Ezra Levant openly supports Tommy Robinson, by the way.

Anyway, this is a good summary of some of the more visible instances of bigotry he's been involved in:

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Ezra_Levant

(Granted, RationalWiki can be annoying, but they do a good job when it comes to stuff like this.)

lol ok I'll be mindful to post and thoroughly check all the weird wikis as its hit a nerve but it looks like a benign thread regardless of who has posted it.

Do you know who TR is? He has always been a far-right activist and pretty much on the fringes here, even now. I read the (actual) wiki page on Ezra and skimmed through the controversies and EL seems to have gotten far-right after a while? Trying to think of someone that would fit that better than TR.

ezra's been a far-right activist since the 90s eating off far right think tank / koch money since then but it took him a while to move his grift out of alberta.
i somehow got on ezra's mailing list and got woken up at 4 am about a week ago by his announcement that he's putting out a hit on an antifa guy and needs 65k from me.

I do know who TR is, yes, and I can't think of an exact Canadian analogue for his ilk, thankfully. I do find it telling that EL is among his apologists, though (not to mention TR was a correspondent for EL's Rebel Media).

All I'm saying is that while that video is indeed relevant and interesting, you'll be hard pressed to find a Canadian ILXor willing to discuss it without shooting the messenger when the messenger is Ezra fucking Levant.

Fair enough - apologies all. Be patient with us, especially if Trudeau doesn't survive this

For the record, I wasn't indirectly trying to defend Trudeau. He fucked up hard.

Yeah, Levant sucks but that thread is fine.

Best course for the Grits might be for JT to resign and someone clean like Freeland (or JWR herself?) to take over? Wonder if the NDP could capture the centre-left now.

trudeau isn't going to resign though i wouldn't have thought. ego.

Corruption always looks so stupid

I can't see Trudeau resigning over this either.

give it 8 months!

yeah I guess I should have clarified and said, not anytime soon. anyway

One thing that strikes me about the SNC-Lavalin scandal, apart from the obviously egregious ethics of it all, is what it says about the attitudes leading L/liberals actually hold towards the institution of liberal democracy.

— Luke Savage (@LukewSavage) February 28, 2019

OTM

Liberals need to pay a heavy price for this. However, there is an alternative universe where the liberals let SNC-Lavalin sink for these 10 years and the results are horrible. I have no doubt the NDP or the Conservatives would have pressured the exact same way. The real question is not how come the Liberals did this, it is how come one EPC company has so much power in our country? This is where I hope NDP will lead instead of just shitting on Trudeau.

what does that even mean?

ndp should really focus on the populist angle that both the liberals and conservatives are in the pocket of big business and bay street and don't represent hard working canadians blah blah blah

how come one EPC company has so much power in our country?

From the Hudsons Bay Company to Bombardier, when have such companies ever NOT had massive power in Canada?

If the NDP cared about hard working canadians, and I have no doubt they do, they would have taken the same exact position as the Liberals with regards to SNC Lavalin and their possible ten years ban on federal contracts. The company represent 8000 employees in Canada alone. If you have ideas on how to challenge that SNCL monopoly on EPC in Canada without disrupting the industry at large and creating massive unemployment in selected areas then I am all ears, socialist slogans blahs blahs blahs don't do it for me. Nor would a NDP campaign that doesn't offer solutions to this problem other than <lol trudeau sucks>.

Yeah I'm for the rule of law and separation of powers personally

yeah that's what Andrew Scheer is saying.

andrew scheer otm

lord knows there were no scandals under the CPC

much as I hate JT, I have such a horribly sinking fucking feeling about what comes after him

yeah it's going to be the tories and it's going to be v bad

It's going to be really bad if Trudeau gets away with an another electoral win too.

elaborate please

Not as bad as Scheer duh. But considering what just happened I wouldn't want the Canadian electorate to give Trudeau a sense of impunity and invincibility. Last time it happened in Canadian politics, with the liberal, it really sucked.

VHS, are you saying, in essence, that SNC Lavalin is too big to fail (or be prosecuted)? Nationalization would be one answer to that.

now you're talking my language

the NDP are so, so badly in need of a sharp leftward lurch and it drives me nuts that so many party rank and file don't agree

I believe if it is too big to fail it is too big to be nationalized, I think it merely moves the same problems from one location to another. An idea I have and have to verify is to gradually discriminate larger companies in favor of smaller companies on provincial and federal projects, so these smaller companies acquire the skills and workers to grow and it caps SNCL to become too huge to ever create this dependence. Pump equity into midsized companies like Stantec so they can diversify the amount of projects they can deliever (I think they don't have energy projects for example), it could also create a more balanced industry. Finally SNCL who is already kinda big, should not be able to buy smaller canadian firms but maybe that's already the case, I would have to check. Something similar to the big five banks is what I would aim for like over the next 20 years. It's easier to do for infrastructure than for aviation, which is the other similar big engineering problem Canada has. These are ideas they might be really bad.

"These are ideas, they might be really bad" <--not a bad NDP slogan actually

I would not trust a nationalised SNCL with a lib and cpc governement anymore than I do now.

hahaha xp

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to shuffle cabinet Friday. https://t.co/sMfbCWrnLG #cdnpoli

— CBC News Alerts (@CBCAlerts) March 1, 2019

That’ll help

yup, crisis averted!! JT's generational political instincts strike once again

sigh