What will prevent Canadians from out-crazying the US in the next major election?
(Honest question; Vancouver is a beautiful city, and presumably much less expensive than SF.)
IMO, the unchanging thing about Canadians is we want to be able to look down our noses at Americans. This is a stupid way to govern, but it runs deep in the Canadian psyche. Trump has caused many people here to realize that our self-righteousness is at risk if we permit such a candidate to run, let alone win, here.
Consequently, the more moderate candidates in the ongoing Conservative leadership race are reaping windfalls from every mean-spirited or xenophobic thing that Trump does. After the shooting at a mosque in Quebec, Michael Chong (a front-runner in the leadership race) denounced demagogues like Trump and Leitch (she of "barbaric cultural practices" fame, also a leadership candidate)--and it was well-received by conservatives and liberals alike.
And, for additional context, the last time my hometown elected a non-conservative was 49 years ago, so if they're rejecting such leaders, I'm reasonably confident the broader country will, too.
Indeed. While we have similar laws regarding denaturalization, Trump did not make them. But you're probably right about the rest; I doubt a Tory PM would demonstrate the same level of sloppy, slapdash, incompetent jackassery we're seeing from the new occupant of the Oval Office.
Tangentially: I get there's a lot of fear going around on the subject of authoritarianism, dictatorship, Nazis, et al. I don't buy it, not least because we had the same with Bush, and the only difference of note in today's rhetoric is that it's as much hotter and faster as the Internet that powers it - remember that Facebook and Twitter weren't a thing back then. (So far we've come!)
Trump is no Hitler, though, any more than Bush was. He's not even a Mussolini. He might be some fraction of a Berlusconi, but most of all, at least to judge his performance so far, he's an utter boob, and not the first we've had in the office. I suppose an appeal for moderation in rhetoric, and awareness of history in one's analysis, is foredoomed to mockery and oblivion in this age of hot takes and clickbait. But it might ease the mind a bit to take, where you can, a somewhat longer view.
As an example, you say "he's an utter noob", and, sure, that is one of the possibilities. But it's not the only possibility, so one would be wrong to say that it's obvious, for example, that he's an utter noob. He might be, or he might not be. How do you know? And those other possibilities have to be considered too, to be fair. It'd be wrong to dismiss them straight up as clickbait without examining the merits.
(I'm not sure if you meant noob or boob, it looked like a typo to me, but as luck would have it, my reply works both ways.)
(I did mean "boob" - see https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/boob .)
So "repealed" is premature, as C-6 still doesn't have any announced target date for entering in effect.
God no. They passed a (bullshit) law saying that they could revoke the Canadian citizenship of someone under specific circumstances. You had to be a dual citizen (or eligible?) and commit one of a few crimes.
- obtaining citizenship by fraud (this I think is entirely reasonable) - committing an act of terrorism - treason - taking up arms against Canada
The liberals repealed some of this already (IIRC everything but the portions about fraudulently obtaining citizenship).
> What will prevent Canadians from out-crazying the US in the next major election?
We have a sane electoral system and just generally aren't as crazy.
I'm a Canadian and I am very worried about the future of our country. Due to various factors, new laws affecting large swathes of the population can get effected very quickly. What starts off as reasonable laws can get co-opted into something very crazy (any student of history should know this well). I echo the concern made by a few others that we are one election away from craziness. Not sure how things are going to go at this point. As a visible minority, I am scared.
What tech companies are so upset about is being cut off from their cheap source of exploitable labor. The rest of the huffing and puffing is just a smokescreen to make you forget what they are guilty of.
That's pretty much what we're looking at right here, don't you think?