We Still Have a Government, Right?: Canadian Politics 2020

Do you mean he seems like he might win a federal election?

This was what I meant, yeah. I was thinking that Sloan is young, comparatively handsome and charismatic, has a clearly distinct ideological stance that could fire up a base, and seems somewhat consistent with what is happening on the right around the world (although he actually seems more religious than Trump or Johnson). It was probably paranoia, though. Lewis is a bit of a wild card from my pov - I don't really know anything about her. I'm not really sure if there is a strong ideological difference between Mackay and O'Toole, going by their online platforms? Somewhat surprisingly, O'Toole seems to make much more of a point of being open to Quebec nationalism.

Also, Mackay's history doesn't scream "winner" to me and he and O'Toole just seem staid, although I said all the same things about Harper too.

I think MacKay wants to take the party in a more David Cameron direction, while still complaining incessantly about wokeness

second lockdown is looming (here in BC anyway) and CERB runs out in October.

― Temporary Erogenous Zone (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, August 19, 2020 5:29 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

i disagree about second lockdown. new cases per day are where they were in the late march/early april peak, but (i) the age distribution is skewed way younger so it's barely translated into icu beds, (ii) we have more testing capacity compare to then and the positivity rate is half what it was in march, (iii) we increased from 5-10 cases per day (which is probably unsustainably low for a place of our pop) to 60-80 cases per day a couple weeks ago but it's not increasing very fast, and BC CDC's contact tracing is very good and pretty huge. we'll see what happens when schools re-open but i'm pretty optimistic. i don't think Henry & co are going to go New Zealand on us and lockdown every time there is community spread

the CERB replacement programs seem pretty generous, from what i saw

ballot machine malfunctions, good stuff

wonder if Trudeau is gonna propose pharmacare and universal 5$/day daycare. would be tight if we went full Quebeckistan

you never see polls for these things, but it's gonna be mackay right?

I think it will be close, my sense is their base hates him

Xps. Good points floppy,maybe I'm being alarmist. My wife is a server and so I worry a lot about both the amount of strangers she is in close proximity to and also her restaurant shutting down lol.

As for the tories, their voting system is not popular vote but per ridings won right?

hope ur wife can stay safe jim!

O'Toole time

seems like a loser to me but wtf do I know about what Tories get excited by

This really is an Iowa caucus situation. @LeslynLewis won the popular vote in the second round but was third in the points pic.twitter.com/5izWoLkP4q

— ¡Nathan! (@thenathanfinn) August 24, 2020

As long as I am your leader, Quebec nationalists, like conservatives from all walks of life, will be welcome in our party.

https://erinotoole.ca/quebec-platform/

So, like I was saying, this seemed to me like the most distinctive thing about his online platform vs the other candidates'. This is actually a pretty long and comprehensive section of it. I think he might be hoping for a Mulroney-style union of angry Westerners and QC nationalists, although the obv differences are that Mulroney could speak French and came from QC.

is o'toole's French as bad as McKay's?

https://youtu.be/gmm7NKV0vTM?t=204

The face-offs between candidates are next-level.

wow, truly awful. I hope for the sake of francophones' ears and brains that he improves.

The bar is as low as it's ever been, but at least he's not that hard to follow?

Yeah, like Scheer (or maybe Chrétien or Bernier in English), he strikes me as OK on the level of comprehension and comprehensibility and is probably the least bad of the four, just a long way from Mulroney or anyone I could see nationalist Quebecers getting excited about.

Especially now that the Bloc is back in business and swiping votes from the Conservatives and NDP both.

lol

Je vais me tenir debout devant la clique du Plateau

— Erin O'Toole (@ErinOTooleMP) June 17, 2020

Haha what; what is the context for O'Toole needing to stand up to the hipsters (?) of the Plateau? Or was Laverdière mean to him or something?

No idea. I can easily picture Montreal being shorthand for godless black bloc commies with face tats and a feeble grasp of English among older Conservative crowds out West, but I doubt they've heard of the Plateau per se.

I'm sure "la clique du plateau" means nothing to most of Canada, but it's an attempt to get rural (and Quebec City) votes in Quebec. There's this whole thing about Montreal not being "real" Quebec.

That makes sense. Smart of him to go after the radio poubelle vote.

Well, yeah, he's obv targeting a RW franco Quebecois audience with that tweet; just seems like a bizarre angle to take for an anglophone from Ontario who I doubt has ever received much grief from QS or GYBE or whoever. (It would probably be a strange tweet even for a francophone from Ontario.) It does mean everyone is talking about O'Toole's attempt to court that vote, though, so idk maybe we need to watch out for buffoons in the social media age.xp

Statue of John A toppled and decapitated in Montreal.

same statue was previously decapitated (by separatists) in 1992; it has been vandalized at least four times in the past year

Macdonald and Montréal from our 2018 story. pic.twitter.com/Spi9run4kQ

— Les Perreaux (@perreaux) August 29, 2020

O'Toole's "Take Back Canada" (I always want to say "take Canada back") actually seems like a nastier slogan than "Make America Great Again", the more I think about it. At least the latter could be interpreted as saying "Make America great again for all Americans" (if you didn't know anything about the GOP). "Take Canada Back" explicitly identifies some portion of the population (presumably the elected government and the people who voted for them?) as enemies from whom the country needs to be seized.

xp Haha I didn't know or remember that.

La Presse, 17/11/92:

https://i.imgur.com/mZOsvjD.jpg

« C'est cool d'être canadien »

the eternal million dollar q

Hm, this from the National Post from 2 years ago, is actually a p good summary of MacDonald's ethnic cleansing of FN peoples in the Prairies: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/here-is-what-sir-john-a-macdonald-did-to-indigenous-people

I haven't read the whole article yet but the abstract seems to summarize well how taking the vote away from Chinese-Canadians in 1885 laid a foundation for the introduction of biological racism into Canadian law: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwi-grzNk8jrAhXOUt8KHax8BngQFjABegQIBRAB&url=https%3A%2F%2Fojs.library.queensu.ca%2Findex.php%2FCRI%2Farticle%2Fview%2F5974%2F5934&usg=AOvVaw0ezn3fwgdMLoqzhZypFvne

I'm not educated enough to know what to make of this:

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/trudeau-announces-cash-for-loans-support-to-black-canadian-entrepreneurs-1.1491443

Is there a First Nations equivalent?

I think so: https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100032796/1100100032800

and: https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1375201178602/1375202816581

Thanks.

So proud:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Quebec/comments/iryz0n/manifestation_antimasque_à_montréal_repost/

Gotta copy/paste that link, alas. It documents an anti-mask and, uh, pro-Trump protest we just had in Montreal. 10,000 people reportedly showed up.

Have there been such events elsewhere in Canada, and of a similar magnitude? Either way, it's hard not to feel ashamed by proxy.

Oh and a couple of Q flags apparently turned up as well, you just don't get to see them in the video.

Un peu surréel de voir un drapeau Trump juste à côté d'un drapeau de l'indépendance du québec et que le contexte c'est une manifestation contre des mesures de santé publique. C'est 2020 en tbk ça.

as I keep telling people, in many ways we're just the USA on a time delay!!

There was an anti-mask demo of about 100 people in front of City Hall here in July and there was an attempted anti-mask event in the Outaouais on the weekend that barely got anyone. Not sure if there were bigger ones elsewhere.

Anti-mask demo here tomorrow

Or today rather lol. Looks pretty big and I have to go downtown lol

as I keep telling people, in many ways we're just the USA on a time delay!!

― unpaid intern at the darvo institute (Simon H.), Sunday, September 13, 2020 1:39 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

sad lol yes, perfect phrasing

It's a classic Simon zing, but necessary self-deprecation aside, I like to think we're talking about at least half a millennium here.

I dont think so