Defenestrate Them All: Canadian Politics 2021

Huh, "Biden indicates plans to cancel Keystone XL pipeline permit on 1st day in office, sources confirm": https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/biden-keystone-xl-1.5877038

My wife's very happy about that.

i remember obama delaying it. good on biden

I’m very much an environmentalist, so ultimately feel like it’s the right move, but I do have concerns about the economic realities. I sometimes wonder if the average Canadian just thinks of the energy sector as just one of many similar big Canadian resources? Because I think I did, until I worked over a decade in banking - in a central admin centre. We had branches and large clients from coast to coast, but the small handful of Alberta transits, by quantity, a tiny fraction of all accounts nationally - in terms of actual dollars, they absolutely dwarfed everything else combined. It did change my perspective a bit.

yes, canada is a petro-state. it needs a kick in the arse to move away from it as it is a dying industry afaict

Along those lines, some good news (economic and environmental) out of Ingersoll they were talking about on the radio this morning.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/gm-canada-announces-tentative-deal-for-1-billion-electric-vehicle-plant-in-ontario-1.5269550

Good:

Racism has no place in the Conservative Party of Canada. My statement: pic.twitter.com/TP6uATWOi3

— Erin O'Toole (@erinotoole) January 18, 2021

good excuse for them to get rid of a headache, but I'll take it

Am I the only person in the country that thinks this is overblown? Like, how is someone supposed to vet every donation? This guy gave Sloan like $100, he’s supposed to have his people research every donation, recognize the name of this Nazi?

Maybe that’s a good idea, I don’t know, but is that kind of deep dive SOP?

I’m glad Sloan’s gone, he is a human cancer, but it feels like a weird scandal.

Can you even donate to an individual MP without it going through the party in the first place? I don't think there's a way for me to donate directly to Catherine McKenna or Joel Harden but not to the Liberals or NDP?

the donation was for sloan's leadership campaign

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/white-nationalist-donation-derek-sloan-1.5878070

sloan claims he had no idea who the guy was and is returning the money, but no denunciation of white supremacism in his statements either. there's a long history of denouncing and returning embarrassing political donations, and I agree politicians probably can't vet everything. O'Toole is just taking the opportunity to get rid of a headache.

It’s not that he accepted the donation. It’s that his specific policies attracted it.

definitely o’toole using a good opportunity. agreed it’s overblown, but part of the reason is that it’s the kind of thing that goes with the rest of what sloan represents. this is the guy who said he’d designate antifa as a terrorist group, after all.

the best part is that it’ll damage cpc as well, and deservingly so. they had many opportunities to get rid of sloan before.

in any case, i’ll celebrate derek finally getting what he deserved. too bad he blocked me on fb/twitter.

sloan is so disingenuous about the shit he propagates, justifying his antivax petition with the "any constituent can write a petition" defence. he's done and said a ton of things that merit getting the boot.

Oh I see, so the donation was given through the party but meant for Sloan's leadership campaign per se and, even while the party did take a cut, the issue is that Sloan attracted that element in the first place?

seems like you can give up to $1500 directly to a leadership contestant (but yeah the conservatives took a 10% cut). and you can give to electoral district associations or party-endorsed candidates, not just to parties.

https://www.elections.ca/content.aspx?section=res&dir=ces&document=part6&lang=e

Reportedly a glitch in the reporting, but cases do seem to be coming down. In London, their 5-day average is down ~35%.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/covid-19-ontario-january-19-2021-vaccine-update-1.5878789

lol, why do Canadians do this?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EsMp0HAXMAE0EwX?format=png&name=240x240

Annoying, but I accept it. Vague moral superiority is pretty gentle as far as nationalism goes. If we don’t have social cohesion, we lose our social programs.

Oh hey,

Not sure this should have been the event that triggered it, but Sloan is booted. Well deserved.

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2021/01/20/conservatives-mps-eject-derek-sloan-in-a-secret-ballot-vote.html

I'm not really up on this guy, so yes, you guessed it, first reaction: "Huh? Far from great, but a couple of songs weren't bad."

it's nice to see o'toole jumping on this so quickly and decisively - harper would've likely doubled down in a similar scenario,
but i have a feeling this will be seen as a weakness by his caucus.

Yeah I'm underwhelmed by how O'Toole demanded that his caucus had to "coax me" into ejecting Sloan

poorly formed joeks aside, I thought this Andrew Coyne article was excellent:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-conservatives-have-a-hypocrisy-problem-that-goes-beyond-derek/

"Derek Sloan is right. It is hypocritical for the Conservative Party to kick him out of caucus for unwittingly accepting a donation from the notorious neo-Nazi – and party member – Paul Fromm, when the party had done the same. Like Mr. Sloan, the party failed to screen out either Mr. Fromm’s donation or membership application – forgivably, perhaps, as he gave his name as Frederick P. Fromm. But only Mr. Sloan is paying the price for it.

Not that he deserves any better. There are worse things than hypocrisy, and one of them is the party’s willingness to tolerate Mr. Sloan’s presence in caucus as long as it has. If Mr. Sloan is being scapegoated in the present case, he had already earned his ticket out of caucus several times over: for suggesting homosexuality was a choice, for insinuating that Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer, Theresa Tam, was in the pay of the Chinese government, for other public statements that were at best reckless and at worst outright bigoted."

From that article (which was very good indeed):

Is it any wonder that more than 40 per cent of Conservative voters, according to a Leger poll, would have voted for Donald Trump in the recent election? Or that a similar number believe he actually won?

Err, really? That's worse than I thought.

I guess it's only 40% of 30% of all Canadian voters, if you want to look at the glass as being 12% full

this is a minor thing but i'm curious: i wonder what happens to sloan's blue check twitter account now, since it's got "cpc" in the name.
does he lose the right to use it?

Sloan is paying the price for everything he's done wrong, obv.

I'd say he lost California but he was actually a student union president down there. Hunh.

lol sund4r

lol

It’s not real until he does his time

And it's official: https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/biden-revokes-keystone-xl-permit-in-blow-to-canada-s-oil-sector-1.5275343

kenney big mad

Kenney says if the U.S. administration refuses to discuss Keystone, the Canadian government must impose trade and economic sanctions, he says. "Not doing so would create a dangerous precedent," Kenney says. #ableg

— Janet French (@Jantafrench) January 20, 2021

hard to see any downsides to that plan

Tough guy

Not sure I completely understand this: https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/mobile/man-freezes-to-death-steps-from-montreal-shelter-after-public-health-makes-beds-off-limits-1.5271305

Why does a curfew mean that homeless shelters need to close? If anything, wouldn't it keep people from being out and violating the curfew if they could be inside a shelter at night?

Watch your back, pom. You've got some real polyglot competition now:

No matter what language you speak — or in my case try to — all of us need to stay home.

Stay home. Stay safe. Save lives. pic.twitter.com/zy3qeqUA43

— Doug Ford (@fordnation) January 21, 2021

I had to listen back to the Tamil one a couple of times to work out what words he was even trying to say.

Hahaha, that's genuinely amazing. No Romanian, though – tsk, tsk.

I know it's all PR, but it saddens me to think that Legault would never so much as consider doing such a video.

Oh wow, haha

Damn, that was quick:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/governor-general-payette-step-down-1.5882675

At the beginning of her mandate, sources said, Payette also put staff on the spot by quizzing them about outer space — asking them to name all the planets in the solar system, for example, or to state the distance between the sun and the moon.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/rideau-hall-governor-general-payette-1.5861952

she sounds like a real scumbag

The outer space pop quizzes cracked me up ("what? This is how we build morale at CSA!") but, yeah, sounds nasty otherwise.

That’s a lot like what our 5th grader thinks is good conversation.

Heh. Guess Payette never outgrew the little kid who wanted to become an astronaut.

How many people lost their jobs because of Pluto?

yeah this policy was pretty much bullshit: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-government-brings-in-10-application-fee-for-freedom-of-information-requests-1.6264020

New thread: Down With the Sickness: Canadian Politics 2022