Justin Trudeau promises to resign as PM
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Quite a few accounts who have been here for many years have been breaking the guidelines rather shamefully in this thread. That's dismaying. If established users can't set a good example for others, what chance does this community have? If Hacker News is interesting enough to keep coming back to for years, you owe it to your fellow members not to contribute to destroying it.
p.s. We changed the URL from https://www.bbc.com/news/live/clyjmy7vl64t. Interested readers might want to look at both.
Whatever you think of the truckers' position or protest tactics, any punishment for their actions ought to go through the laws and court system. Trudeau instead essentially told the banking system "You can't do business with those people, they're terrorists." Patio11's words of what happened next:
"The assistant deputy finance minister...said...'The intent was not to get at the families', and when a democratic government starts a sentence that way something deeply #*&$#ed up has happened."
I'm not on the pulse of Canadian politics, so I don't really know what sins or political circumstances have led Trudeau to this point, or if he has any redeeming qualities. Personally, I'm glad to see him gone.
[1] https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/debanking-and-debunki...
(You'll have to Ctrl+F trucker as this blog doesn't seem to have <a name> for headings, as is customary on e.g. Wikipedia.)
Wait, are people that shocked that their democratic governments are wiling to act like mobsters/dictators against a minority group just to get their way and appease a majority, when the history books are full of such examples? People must have a short memory then and why history repeating itself is a fact.
Canadian politics (not uniquely here) is plagued with petty squabbles. The really meaningful political and social issues don't get any airtime.
This just illustrates why pure/Athenian democracy doesn’t work. Madness of the crowds and all that. Decide most issues by plebescite and you get an emotional outcome.
The Republic fell because a bunch of senators were too greedy and refused to do basic land reform or anything else to make life better for anyone other than themselves.
There's no shortage of absolutely insane tyrants that made people's lives miserable.
Travel the country up and down, big cities and small towns, and I guarantee you will conclude that Canadians are the best people around.
1/3 of the country's entire population is in the GTA. That brief moment is the most contact that Canadians will have with each other on any given day.
And they treat everyone worse than garbage. I've been in busier commuter zones that have been far more civil than that.
Even the drunks going home on the LIRR are better than that.
I won't disagree with you that Canadians are great people -- I spent a lot of time living there for a reason -- but you have to judge people by when their hair is down, not their Sunday best.
So the most annoyed 1% of Canadians go through there every day.
Not the world’s most rigorous basis for a sweeping statement about an entire culture.
The funniest thing about the responses here to me is that not a single person has disputed the characterization I presented -- what I'm describing seems to be clear enough to everyone.
It’s just a whole bunch of stressed people in a hurry.
I do understand where you're getting at though, and trust me, if you go to Berlin and you only speak English, you'll get far worse than you would from the Québécois for doing the same.
It's almost like those Americans who give people shit for not speaking English, except we have even less entitlement to that.
The trucker protests were right in the middle of the Covid supply chain issues. Not defending the actions taken in particular, but it had the potential to be a much worse issue than a minor inconvenience.
120dB train horns at 2AM in the morning in a residential area is not a minor inconvenience.
Have you ever actually been to downtown Ottawa, where those protests were held?
It's not "a residential area" in any sense.
The moderately-wide Ottawa River forms the north-west edge of the downtown area.
Along it are the Alexandra Bridge, Major's Hill Park, the Rideau Canal, Parliament Hill, the Supreme Court, Library and Archives Canada, and other government-related buildings and infrastructure. Those aren't residential.
Immediately south-east of those is Wellington Street, where those protests were held, literally right in front of Parliament Hill. It's about as close as they could physically get to the Parliament Buildings.
South-west of that, there are numerous government office buildings, commercial office buildings, small shops, restaurants, a few hotels, and so on for a number of blocks. Again, those aren't residential.
Also keep in mind that the government-imposed lockdowns and other restrictions being protested were preventing or severely limiting the use of the offices, hotels, restaurants, and other businesses in the area.
You have to go out about 1 km from Parliament Hill before you even begin to start encountering any significant number of apartment buildings and residences.
Downtown Ottawa is not "a residential area", and those protesters were in the most relevant, appropriate, and reasonable place they could have been to protest policies imposed by the Government of Canada.
For example, https://www.google.com/maps/place/9+Rideau+St,+Ottawa,+ON+K1... is a condo building.
When you say it is not a residential area in “any sense” and he finds a counterexample showing it is clearly a residential area in some sense then what you said is just untrue.
i dont see why a bit of road would justify honking the horn all night at an apartment building though. can you elborate on what changes when there's a road? the apartment building has people sleeping in it.
> It's not "a residential area" in any sense.
World-renowned pianist Angela Hewitt would disagree:
* https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/angela-hewitt-play...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Hewitt
Her living room, with her piano, is in the area.
It isn't uncommon for posh famous people to have their posh second, third, etc., residences in places that where normal regular people don't actually live...like Downtown Ottawa.
Canada is not the US. Why would it matter when the judiciary is not a co-equal branch of government?
i.e. When there is Parliamentary sovereignty/supremacy?
An inferior authority can never legally overrule a superior authority by definition.
Then there is an external guarantor of the rights of the people against the government.
…the coëqual judiciary.
Isn't that why you have the police, army, etc? You use force to remove those people breaking the laws, not go after their families. That's some USSR shit.
Nobody went after anyone's family.
If you solicit donations to fund a criminal act, you lose access to the money you raise. This is a thing that happens in normal crime too. Its not just an emergency act thing.
People forget that many of the protestors who lost banking access wasn't due to the emergency act, but because one pissed off ottawa resident sued them in civil court and obtained a court order to that affect.
> "It was an overcharge to begin with," Beyak said.
> He said if police tried to storm the barricade, he would "slit their throats."
I don’t think you have any sources to back that up.
This is what a protest is. (French here). If protesters go as far, and in Canada it was because you did them dirty, then you must sit at a table and negotiate. You must sit at a table and negotiate with everyone in a country. You cannot do someone dirty then complain that they protest.
It’s effects removing the right to protest, and therefore, removing democracy itself. Go live in Singapore?
A particularly odious moral framework, mostly used to justify mass murder.
They became occupiers when they started living in their trucks. There is no right to occupy in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
If they had slow-rolled their trucks to create traffic jams that is a protest and would have been quite another thing (but also generally illegal, e.g., Ontario Highway Traffic Act §132).
If you don't like what the government is doing elect a new government: that's what elections are for. You don't get to throw a hissy fit and mess up other people's lives and livelihood every time there's a decision you don't like.
Every society is about balancing the rights of the individual and the rights of the collective, and their responsibilities as well. About balancing of different rights when they are in opposition to each other.
As a sympathizer to the HK protests, I've heard all these talking points before -- that the protesters are ruining the economy and making things miserable for everyone. Usually the protests can really only get so big when there is a shared grievance that keeps getting ignored by the administration.
In the case of HK, the grievance was the possibility for criminals to be extradited to Chinese mainland.
In the case of convoy protests, the grievance was the vaccine mandate in order to work a trucking job that's mostly solitary with minimal human contact.
If you are expecting protests to force someone's hand, that isn't protest or protected political speech, that's coercion. Some forms of that are legal (e.g., strikes), but there are pretty sharply defined limits.
Crying because your illegal civil disobedience led to civil reaction by the law is the height of "oh no the leopard ate my face" idiocy.
I take exception to the framing of “attempts to settle this.” The government used violence and threat of violence to make the problem go away. There wasn’t an attempt at compromise. Do what I say or else isn’t an attempt to settle.
Typically such measures are mandated by court order, not executive fiat.
By your logic they should be.
And pipeline blocking protests in BC saw fairly heavy handed police intervention under the Trudeau govt. Those blockades were cleared by the RCMP, quite aggressively, something which the police basically refused to do for the convoy protest: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Canadian_pipeline_and_rai...
I don't think it's really that cut and dry of a comparison in favour of your argument. Oil and gas protests in Canada have been treated more aggressively than the convoy was.
And I remember a few motorist incidents, but numerous? Certainly more than I would prefer.
I think this is important regardless of whether you believe in their specific target of protest or not. The right to peacefully protest is very very important, and your feelings on a specific protest should be wholly divorced from the importance of preserving the right to protest in general.
Nobody was held hostage. People unhappy with their rulers took peacefully to the streets and made noise and peacefully and temporarily interfered with some business activity.
This is the furthest thing from “holding the government hostage”. It’s the adversarial relationship between the populace and the state working exactly as intended and designed.
This kind of distortion suggests an agenda. Regardless how sympathetic you might feel towards the protesters and the politicians standing behind them, we should focus on honest dialogue.
It is a fact that the protest was done in a way which disrupted the lives of the residents and jeopardized their safety. The right to peacefully protest comes with a responsibility, and the context in which it’s done matters greatly.
For example, a counter protest by medical workers was cancelled when a state of emergency was announced. Look no further for a model of responsibility in public discourse. We should make sure the voices of responsible citizens are amplified, not drowned out by furious hostility.
Nobody’s safety was jeopardized. Some disruption is the point of a protest; you can’t operate the building during a sit-in, for example.
“protest in a way that doesn’t affect anything and allows society to ignore you” is not a legitimate or constructive type of feedback.
Declaring the Emergency acts was overwhelmingly popular in Canada and remains one of the most popular things Trudeau ever did. The moves to restrict access to banking affected less than 20 people (and I think they were generally funnelling money from international propaganda groups or committing similar financial crimes).
Maybe it's just because I'm part of a minority but your entire comment is exactly the issue with Canadian politics. We basically have 0 rights the moment a majority decides that we don't. I guess that's the perks of having an incredibly ineffective constitution.
The sanctioned individuals were involved with blocking an international border. They had the stated intention of causing mischief and preventing leaving or entering Canada. They were blockading their own economy; they deserved what they got. You don't disrupt life and economy just because you've been asked to help keep a virus from spreading and get to get away with it.
And now we'll curtail the rights of people who absolutely do NOT deserve it.
The lurch to the right is deeply inspired by attitudes like this. We even have the Premier of Alberta claiming that unvaccinated people are "the most discriminated against group in history", which, whatever "side" of the vaccination "debate" you fall on, you know is an unbelievably stupid thing to say.
Please, help prevent a drastic lurch to the right by at least reading the lede of an article as well as the headline.
It’s also important to note that afterwards Quebec separatism continued to be a legitimate political movement without a terrorist wing, with parties represented in federal and provincial governments.
Some members of the team, including myself, became active against the Vietnam war and later against the War Measures Act proclaimed by Trudeau.
That Act,similar in many ways to the Patriot Act 35 years later in the US, suspended civil liberties under the pretext of a terrorist danger.
(The alleged danger at the time was a Quebec group later revealed to be infiltrated by the RCMP, the Canadian secret police.)
Twelve communist bookstores in Quebec (unrelated to the terrorists) were burned down by police;
several political activists from various groups across Canada were incarcerated in mental hospitals, etc. etc.
I publicly opposed the consolidation of this fascist law, both in the university senate and in public demonstrations.
The administration of the university declared me guilty of “disruption of academic activities”.
Rumors began to be circulated, for example, that my categorical arrow diagrams were actually plans for attacking the administration building.
My contract was not renewed"
For some people all this stuff is very much part of their reason for being, but the FLQ took being obnoxious to make a point to staggering new levels. Just the titles of their books alone are astonishing, and impossible to quote here without causing justified offence.
As opposed to using it to curtail support? It was used against occupiers and there is no Charter right to that (2011 ONSC 6862; 2024 ONSC 3755).
> We basically have 0 rights rights the moment a majority decides that we don't. I guess that's the perks of having an incredibly ineffective constitution.
Wat?
* https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/csj-sjc/rfc-dlc/ccrf-ccdl/
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and...
There are multiple cases where governments (with majorities) have passed legislation that was successfully challenged under the Charter.
Further, the Emergencies Act was written post-Charter, with it in mind:
> AND WHEREAS the Governor in Council, in taking such special temporary measures, would be subject to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the Canadian Bill of Rights and must have regard to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, particularly with respect to those fundamental rights that are not to be limited or abridged even in a national emergency;
* https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/e-4.5/page-1.html
We basically have 0 rights the moment a majority decides that we don't.
America had human slaves built into its democracy until the majority said otherwise. Unsure why this is so shocking.
A hospital could still be a net positive for society, even if sometimes people go there and die who otherwise would have lived if they did not go to the hospital.
The nature of the process makes it very difficult to misuse constitutional amendments a mechanism for implementing policy to deal with ephemeral controversies or emotion-laden causes. The only time that really happened was with the 18th amendment, and that was a disaster, which ultimately was repealed.
The amendment process has indeed become impractical in the US, and given that "nature abhors vacuum", a different and easier route to bending the constitutional law was found - nominate your people to SCOTUS and let the interpret the Constitution favorably to you.
I would argue that this is a very suboptimal solution to the problem.
>A simple majority vote in any of Canada's 14 jurisdictions may suspend the core rights of the Charter. However, the rights to be overridden must be either a "fundamental right" guaranteed by Section 2 (such as freedom of expression, religion, and association), a "legal right" guaranteed by Sections 7–14 (such as rights to liberty and freedom from search and seizures and cruel and unusual punishment) or a Section 15 "equality right".[2] Other rights such as section 6 mobility rights, democratic rights, and language rights are inviolable.
I don't think the US or France can just do a simple (parliamentary!) majority vote to override almost every right their citizens have. And this is not theoretical, the non withstanding clause is getting used more and more frequently here in Canada. And remember, since it's just a simple majority in parliament, it's only a matter of getting around 35% of the total votes. So a government that has 35% the popular vote can just suspend any right we have. Is that actually common?
What about the WWII Japanese internment camps? That wasn’t even a legislative action, it was Executive order 9066. There’s also the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act during the civil war.
I agree it’s not as blatantly spelled out in the Constitution but the mechanisms exist.
This is misleading. It also has to be in their juridsiction.
For example, alberta (25 years ago) tried to use the notwthstanding clause to ban gay marriage. It didn't work because it was out of their juridsiction.
> So a government that has 35% the popular vote can just suspend any right we have.
The notwithstanding clause only applies to some parts of the charter not all of it. It also doesn't apply to rights from other parts of the constitution.
It might also be possible for the federal government to disallow particularly egregious rights violation by provinces. I think its still an open question if fed still has power of reservation or disallowance or not.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42616298.
Depending on the severity, I can even be facing administrative charges of patient abandonment under my state's Administrative Code for standards of care for providers.
Consider it, instead, that the police, as a whole, joined the protest which also had a decent amount of support from the populous.
That's a far cry from one person refusing to do their job with very little (almost none) support from the populous, as your analogy would be.
If it was a single cop refusing to arrest a Nazi for a crime because they agreed with them, that cop would be fired.
Same applies here. If 10 officers misbehave, it is easy to fire them all, as you suggest.
If a majority of the entire police force defects, your only choice is between limiting the scope of the punishment to a few ringleaders vs. basically disbanding the police force and starting a new one from scratch, hoping that you can even recruit enough people to do so; but, in the meantime, the city won't be policed anymore, as the entire institutional memory has been purged.
In most similar cases in history, the authorities opted for a blanket pardon, as it is much less of a headache.
It is not even a new problem. Police is a relatively recent institution, but armies, gendarmes, legions etc. rebelled all the time, and peace usually had to be bought by concessions.
The most significant example I'm aware of is Camden New Jersey.
The city’s crime rate was among the worst in the US. Within nine square miles and among nearly 75,000 residents, there were over 170 open-air drug markets reported in 2013, county officials told CNN. Violent crime abounded. Police corruption was at the core.
Lawsuits filed against the department uncovered that officers routinely planted evidence on suspects, fabricated reports and committed perjury. After the corruption was exposed, courts overturned the convictions of 88 people, the ACLU reported in 2013.
So in 2012, officials voted to completely disband the department – it was beyond reform.
And in 2013, the Camden County Police Department officially began its tenure. No other city of Camden’s size has done anything quite like it.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/09/us/disband-police-camden-new-...
When the police start siding with protestors that’s a government problem, not police problem.
We put up with the occupation for about two weeks, but we saw a steady escalation and decided to leave town. We stayed with family for two weeks until the convoy was cleared.
I'm very proud of the residents who were brave enough to put up a resistance (the so-called "Battle of Billings Bridge"), and I'm appalled by the response by the local police and the province. I absolutely believe the federal government made the correct choice, and this was proven out in the public hearing after the fact on the use of the Emergency Act.
If I remember properly, offering the service for free (for instance in public transport) bear the risk of being held personally responsible of any damage or accident that would happen to anyone (which is not unlikely if you factor in provocations)
* It definitely wasn't peaceful -- activists and Ottawa residents documented numerous incidents of violence, harassment, threats, vandalism, and so on in Ottawa. This document compiles some of it: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13-Zg8yjEPYyybbLy70njbWxG...
* Organizers encouraged participants to bring more children when it became clear police action was imminent, presumably to complicate law enforcement efforts. A Facebook post even suggested adding bouncy castles to "contribute to the fun" during these escalations. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/17/freedom-conv...
* In the case of Ambassador Bridge, some reportedly put their children in front of the police. https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/convoy-protests-total-ar...
* There’s academic discussion suggesting that children and family-friendly elements were intentionally brought in for PR and to slow the police response. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/cag.12909?af=R
* Despite claims of peaceful protest, there were reports of ambulances being blocked or even pelted with rocks. https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/ambulances-pelted-...
* This is without getting into the hate speech. https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/441/CHPC/Brief/B...
* Pushing a reporter live on air: https://x.com/mylenecrete/status/1494874304814751744
* Beating a counter-protestor on camera: https://x.com/timabray/status/1488231660260839430?t=Bx4fGVxR...
* Attacking a shop employee for masking up on their way to work: https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=23006638534070...
* Smashing windows of a business with a Pride flag: https://imgur.com/a/80bmPQ8
* Trying to handcuff shut the doors of an apartment building: https://x.com/gray_mackenzie/status/1492705868697198593
* Encouraging harassment of the lawyer leading the class action lawsuit against them: https://www.facebook.com/groups/217129079397701/permalink/62...
* Threatening public officials: https://www.ottawapolice.ca/Modules/News/index.aspx?newsId=7...
* Spamming emergency services so they could not be used: https://x.com/OttawaPolice/status/1491788988654383115
* Harassing children at an elementary school: https://pressprogress.ca/elementary-school-students-and-teac...
* Bomb threats against a children's hospital: https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/cheo-targeted-by-bomb-threat-monda...
* Pelting ambulances with rocks: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/ambulances-pelted-...
These are just the things that were recorded, reported on, and archived with the links functioning three years later. Scroll up and you can read about what many of us saw in person. And yes, there's more where that came from. But it's much better to read from people who live in Ottawa and want to share their experiences: https://www.opc-cpo.ca/
The first and second happened only a couple blocks away from us, and we frequented both businesses, so it was infuriating to see them and their employers attacked like that. We lived in an apartment building so the third one was pretty alarming.
Also, it takes a couple of hours to get the police to unblock a road. Last time I checked, money movement in bank accounts does not block roads.
Blocking a road is a fire hazard and should never have been tolerated by local police for that reason alone. You cannot impede transit in a city.
The mishandled response to the trucker protest should be blamed on the city and the province, not on Trudeau.
The liberal, moral, fast and peaceful solution to the trucker protests was simple: stop forcing people to take experimental drugs against their will. The vaccines didn't reduce transmission, and there is no rule against living life in a risky way (even if you believe the vaccines worked at all), so there was never any moral argument for the mandates. The truckers were right to protest, as Trudeau and the Canadian people were doing them a severe injustice.
Every single vaccine or gathering mandate I experienced was either provincial (Conservatives) or municipal (also conservative for Toronto and georgetown where I live).that they barked up the completely wrong tree is the breathtakingly depressing stupidity behind the whole thing.
Don't believe me? Alberta Conservatives did not have same policies. Then they begged BC and Saskatchewan for ICU beds but that's besides the point - provinces and municipalities had freedom to enact different policies.
Meanwhile the feds only had jurisdiction over borders and airports. They acquired the vaccines, but it was the provinces that doled them out and set the policies for what would require them.
At the height of covid Ford even had outdoor ski hills shut down. Crazy times. Some of it made sense, some of it didn't. But I can tell you my neighbours with F Trudeau stickers were very angry about the vaccines, but still somehow are voting for Ford. Confusing.
I personally think Chrétien was a terrible offender, since his balanced budgets in the 90’s were a result of pushing responsibilities on the provinces. The current wave of conservative provincial governments have similarly created their own problems (particularly with the international student explosion) while placing all of the blame of the federal government.
Harris/Klein + Chretien was a deadly combination, and more intimately connected than people will admit. Supposed ideological opponents, but the latter created the conditions for the former to thrive.
Not saying they did right, but curious.
Those would be my starting place.
I also dont see why the emergency act, if declared, couldn't be used to enforce existing laws and remove the truckers.
I think my core point is that there are conventional and broadly accepted methods to take when people are breaking the law. People breaking the law does not provide a blank check to stop them by any means desired.
And like, I agree with you in general, I just don’t see the action as an abuse of power. The economic intervention was also accompanied by on the ground action, as you said should have happened. At the time there were lots of questions about foreign interference in funding the protest, that’s why their accounts were frozen.
I don't know exactly how Federalism works in Canada but the answer is their jobs. If that doesn't entail stepping in to provincial business, they shouldn't do anything.
There doesn't always have to be something done.
Basically Ottawa police were insubordinate, sided with the truckers/occupiers/protesters, etc. The populist conservative provincial government completely failed to act, likely due to the protestors being on "their side".
> Ottawa was not being policed. Ticketing didn’t start for days. Tow-truck companies hesitated to move illegally parked trucks for fear of losing business from truckers after the protests ended. Protesters were refilling their trucks with jerry cans of diesel. When the police were ordered to put a stop to that, protesters began to carry empty jerry cans en masse to overwhelm law enforcement, but they needn’t have bothered: front-line officers were not following orders to stop them from gassing up. There were reports that sympathetic officers were sharing police intelligence with protesters. Anything the police did could backfire. Families with children were living in some of the trucks, and there were reports of firearms in others.
Maybe the correct move was to resign if it got that bad.
Sibling commenter is right: the police should be the ones under the microscope, for failing the citizenry. Questions should be asked about to what degree their membership was compromised by allegiance to or involvement with the convoy and its cause.
Wut?
The RCMP reports to Parliament up through the Public Safety minister. The bucks stops with the PM.
The federal government has not only the right but the obligation to hold the RCMP accountable.
This was actually discussed as a specific controversy at the time the convoy was undergoing. Trudeau getting on the phone with chief of police and asking him to clear the protest would be a serious breach of political standards in our democracy.
Also the police in question here are the Ottawa Police Service, not the RCMP, I believe.
And I'd disagree about breeching political standards. The police are an executive function and report to the PM. I'd like to think Canadians know that.
The Ottawa police, report to the city of Ottawa. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Police_Service)
The Ontario police, report to the Province of Ontario (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Provincial_Police)
The RCMP, reports of the Country of Canada (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Canadian_Mounted_Police). And the RCMP is "a police service for the whole of Canada to be used in the enforcement of the laws of the Dominion, but at the same time available for the enforcement of law generally in such provinces as may desire to employ its services."
The most important part is the RCMP enforcement in provinces is at the DESIRE of the provinces, in this case The Ontario Provincial Government.
Some Canadians may know the above.
RCMP
Minister responsible Dominic LeBlanc, Minister of Public Safety
How a Canadian doesn’t know the structure of their federal government is beyond me.
Your local cops don't report to the president.
The RCMP don't have jurisdiction in Ottawa. You said it yourself, it's the federal government and it's not the same as the municipal government.
The federal govt sets standards and expectations and framework for the RCMP. It should not, and does not (hopefully), tell them what to do on specific case files.
This was also voted on in Parliament too, 185 to 151
Similar concerns happened when Harper and Ottawa mayor at the time denied the rights and freedoms of protestors of the G20.
It's concerning how the "true north, strong, and free" is losing that last part.
Read more at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_G20_Toronto_summit_protes...
Where on earth does this stat come from?
The real issue was the Ottawa police. The RCMP and OPP were willing to help, and use legal means to clear the blockade. The Ottawa Police dropped the ball, didn't organize, and just made a mess.
I cannot comprehend how it could be overwhelmingly supported.
> Facebook stated that they had removed fake users that were set up in overseas content farms, in Romania, Vietnam, and Bangladesh, which were promoting the convoy protests in Canada. (https://ca.news.yahoo.com/u-congress-asks-facebook-role-2258...)
> An Economist/YouGov poll conducted from February 12 to 15 found that 80% of Americans had heard of the convoy protests. [...] Among Republicans, 71 per cent supported the convoy protests, compared to 18 per cent of Democrats. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_convoy_protest#Opinion_...)
When you consider how much attention the convoy got in America, and how sympathies fell on such partisan grounds, it gets more concerning. Suddenly, Canadian politics is a hunting ground for the likes of Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson, online bot mobs... I think you see where I’m going.
It’s difficult to approach these discussions and not feel like bad-faith actors are artificially making a bugbear out of it. This is especially true when many of the loudest defenders of the convoy weren’t even there, aren't even Canadian, and -- three years later -- may not even be people.
That said, I can agree the Emergencies Act probably shouldn't have been used here, and I have question marks about freezing people's bank accounts -- but this is really a conversation actual Canadians should be owning, since it concerns us most directly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergencies_Act#Opinion_pollin...
Better polls have the numbers of people supporting this measure somewhere around 50%.
That has historically been their explicit policy in general (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_a_terti...).
A better way for this article would be "newsletter XY reported on a poll that said ABC", instead of pointing to the poll but linking to the newsletter.
No, I'm not. I cited a document titled "Wikipedia is a tertiary source" in order to establish that prominently citing secondary sources (which is what makes Wikipedia a tertiary source) is established Wikipedia policy (as described in the document).
Yes, it's stated there that tertiary sources can in principle cite primary sources directly. But in practice, if you try this, you'll be accused of violating Wikipedia policy: in particular, primary sources for anything vaguely political will not be considered reliable (even though the dependence on secondary sources from the approved list is a major source of bias) and if you can't find an acceptable secondary source then other editors will conclude that the material is not notable.
> A better way for this article would be "newsletter XY reported on a poll that said ABC", instead of pointing to the poll but linking to the newsletter.
I agree; but as far as Wikipedians seem to be concerned, if newsletter XY is on the approved RS list, things that it says happened must have actually happened (and you'll only be allowed to challenge that with another source from the approved RS list; they'll say you're doing "original research" by pointing out directly that the poll doesn't actually say ABC, because that's, like, just your analysis of the poll).
Wikipedia is not concerned with truth, in that being able to disprove content in supposedly reliable sources doesn't entitle you to correct the material.
It's best to immediately get suspicious if a polling company is owned by some parent firm with a clear conflict of interest.
The convoy drove across the country, broadcasting their intentions on social media. Yet, everyone acted shocked when they did exactly what they said they were going to do.
I hesitate to call them protesters because I don't think they had a permit or a cohesive message beside F* Trudeau, but they were completely disrespectful to other citizens, and I could never defend their actions. However, irrespective of how unpopular their actions were, the courts have deemed the federal government's response unreasonable and unconstitutional, and I agree with that assessment.
The government could have dealt with this earlier and more directly, but whatever passes for "leadership" these days in Canada has proven itself completely inept.
Personally, I would like to see an inquiry into foreign interference in our elections, but I guess that’s not considered a pressing issue anymore.
I would assert that so-called "votes of no-confidence" in politicians are legitimate protest, even if they do not criticize any specific policy or behavior. It would be a strange world to live in where protests could or would be shut down and everyone would taunt the protesters with "but you didn't have a cohesive message except Stalin is bad".
Some people would like you to believe it's close, and they would be wrong. Stalin murdered/tortured people en masse. Trudeau oversaw a government (democratically elected mine you) through a once in a century pandemic.
The convoy of protesters made a point, was allow to make it for sufficient period of time, and was told to go away when a majority of Canadians didn't agree with their stance.
When faced with reality of their unpopular nature and their inability to build a momentum or consensus. They dug in.
At some point, enough is enough. The Pandemic ended, public heath was restore, and none of what the protesters did mattered. None of the protesters continue to be persecuted by the Government of Canada, Ontario, or the City.
There might well be a giant chasm between Trudeau and Stalin, that's a matter of proper objective measurement which I don't think is easy and certainly has never been done. There is no chasm whatsoever between "fuck Trudeau" and "Stalin is bad". Not even much semantically. In choosing one politician/bureaucrat/whatever over another, I do not agree that anyone ever need justify their choices. Someone saying "I've stopped supporting this politician" whether don't politely or rudely, is valid. Protesting need not have any more message than this.
If protesting did require something more sophisticated than the assertion that one no longer supports them, then the weaseliest politicians and other charlatans could abuse that requirement (in fact, they already try to do so, and apologists make that easier for them to attempt it).
>and was told to go away when a majority of Canadians didn't agree with their stance.
It's unclear that a majority disagreed. It's unclear to me that there remains a majority at all in Canada.
>When faced with reality of their unpopular nature and their inability to build a momentum or consensus. They dug in.
Again, I'm not sure that's reality. If they could be deluded into thinking there were more of them than there were, what makes you immune to the reverse?
>and none of what the protesters did mattered.
We at least agree that it didn't matter in the ways that they hoped. But it mattered otherwise, when we saw the Canadian government use unjustifiable tactics to punish them even before they had been convicted of any crimes.
>None of the protesters continue to be persecuted
Well gee. When you put it like that, that "none *continue* to be persecuted" the complaints do sound kind of silly.
The notion that the common people need permission to protest is exactly why we are slowly, but surely arriving at oligarchies. The French are right. You don't need permission to show the ruling class who's king.
I like to think that I don't live in a country ruled by a King but rather in a community of citizens who have collectively agreed on a way of doing things. This includes the right to express dissent against other citizens to whom we have delegated certain decision-making responsibilities. A permit isn't about seeking permission; it's about ensuring an orderly process so that things don't devolve into chaos and bouncy castles.
At the time, I think we were also in stage 2 lockdown(which should have been enough to stop it), so the people bearing the brunt of these actions, whatever you want to label it as, were not the ones making those decisions. Our elected officials don't live inside Parliament Hill.
Then they need to be renamed.
Permits in this context represent authorization that establishes procedures for exercising this right on property administered by government, which ensure things like public safety without infringing on any rights or freedoms of the protestors or other citizens.
Because protesting has always been about, to some degree, inconveniencing others to achieve your political aims.
Playing devil's advocate here: what if it wasn't mentioned in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms? What if the CRF didn't exist to start with?
(my point being that when things are very bad, certain things need to be done regardless of what a formal law states, you cannot let tyranny call the shots)
Canada is ruled by the British king/queen, even if only symbolically.
>A permit isn't about seeking permission
A permit is permission in granted form. Perhaps you meant something else, it's a poor choice of words.
That is what a protest is. The collective agrees, not their rulers.
> A permit isn't about seeking permission; it's about ensuring an orderly process so that things don't devolve into chaos and bouncy castles.
I don't agree here, and even if that were so, there's a stark difference between the original intention and the ultimate use of permission as a tool.
We can elections yearly or monthly but man .. how unproductive that would be. The lowered cost of tech may indeed improve participatory democracy.
I see the system working in all of this btw. I support Trudeau but am okay if the liberals get voted out.
We were encouraged to bring our kids, and criticized by the opposition for doing so. Our kids had a great time and learned the value political participation.
The protest was 100% successful at it achieving its one, narrow aim.
What exactly would you do if you were a trucker? i.e your livelihood has been denied for a long time?
I agree a police response or similar was sensible for the situations you mentioned, but they didn't rise to the level of national emergency.
The Emergencies Act is part of the laws of Canada:
* https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/e-4.5/
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergencies_Act
And there were court orders:
* https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60356461
* 2022 ONSC 1001: https://www.canlii.org/en/on/onsc/doc/2022/2022onsc1001/2022... ; https://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/english/docs/ISSUE...
And an Act-mandated commission said it was warranted:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Order_Emergency_Commiss...
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Rouleau
That is one step removed from Trudeau investigating himself, we're not talking the gold standard of systemic independence here.
We should vote ranked choice style for economic “tent poles”. Healthcare and infrastructure, on down the list of shared concerns.
That won’t happen though because the innumerate masses will be reminded that if Elon Musk and co don’t get special tax concessions a giant foot will come down from the sky and step on us all.
Had Union grocery workers demand to see my prescription papers please before they’d let me continue on to the pharmacy in the grocery that operated via a different contract and was still open. I said they had to a count of 5 and then I’d drive into them. Trump and/or some random dipshit from an adjacent zip code is the enemy.
The law is a tool for the service of a community, not the other way around.
Abusing a law is not by itself unlawful. You always need to actually do something unlawful.
The thing is, the province wasn't using the powers it had to handle it. The situation was obviously an emergency. You can't just let a convoy of heavy vehicles occupy your national capital indefinitely and say "not a problem, the provincial govt could theoretically handle this"
I'm not sure the Quebec kidnappings would have met the threshold either. There's a strong argument to be made that the law around the emergencies act is a bad law.
The court's finding meant ANY emergency powers would have failed to meet the standard.
They switched to camping in front of the parliament with bouncy castles etc.
The bridge that was occupied in another province was cleared.
I'm really not under the impression that at the time they went in there was any emergency. It was ugly: Peaceful unarmed protesters in pedestrian zones with no trucks in sight were pushed back by squads with assault rifles and loud tear gas grenades. People with assault rifles stormed delivery vans.
The narrative at the time was that of a huge "far right" (what a surprise ...) conspiracy. No proof has ever emerged, it was just an abuse of power of the "left" who were at the peak of their power back then.
Good riddance, Trudeau.
The idea that it was a few days of honking then bouncy castles is nonsense. It was an extended occupation of the downtown of the capital. Endless trucks and other vehicles, many with their wheels removed, back-to-back fully blocking a large section of the downtown for weeks. Yes, honking – and loud truck air horns.
There really was chaos downtown, and not the hand-wringing "poop in the street in SF" type. And a lot of it did have right wing vibes. Examples: A well known café had its large window with a LGBTQ illustration smashed. There was while when emergency workers needed escort downtown because of racist abuse. (I was downtown, I heard and saw a ton myself.) Just incredibly dumb stuff: A soup kitchen was intimidated and raided.
And yes, it was financially supported by the "right", including a lot of American money.
Yes, there was a site with bouncy castles and kids playing, but that's obviously not a problem. There's protest in Ottawa all the time, and it's sometimes inconvenient, and that's life in the capital.
The last straw for me wasn't even the chaos in Ottawa, but the protest shutting down the Ambassador bridge in Windsor. That's really bad. Ontario's auto sector is huge, and the perceived reliability and predictability of the flow of intermediate goods across the border is everything to that sector. Interrupting it has an enormous immediate and ongoing economic impact. (I'm not sure where you get your information, but the bridge is also in Ontario.)
None of that is to say that the emergencies act was the right tool. My fairly uninformed impression is that there were tools short of the act that should have been used.
But it's frustrating seeing disinformation and revisioning like this stand. Please reconsider whatever news sources are providing you with this false information.
But I also think it's not an unreasonable point to disagree on. There are cases where we curtail freedom for emergencies. That's just a fact. That doesn't mean believing in authoritarianism. And, especially early in the pandemic, there was a lot of uncertainty about how apocalyptic it was going to be.
Flip side, since the mass vaccination has been incredibly valuable, policies that undermine public trust in vaccination hurt us as a society down the line and the bar should be particularly high for them! It's often said the most valuable tool for epidemiology is public trust.
The whole thing was idiotic. There was already a public discussion about when the vaccine mandate for truck drivers was going to be removed. There was plenty of of ground for more useful discussion.
So, to answer your question:
> So you support abusive authoritarianism
Great question, but no I do not. I think the government overreacted (too coercively). The freedom convoy, however was a real problem that needed ending. If that sounds like abusive authoritarianism to you, I'd invite you to share your opinion about traffic signs, prohibitions against cannibalism, and publicly funded hospitals.
Overwhelmingly Canadian's wanted the vehicles removed - I recall no public empathy. If not, there would have been overwhelming public outcry and a follow up larger movement protest that would have called for no-confidence motion in that moment.
Also how 'dangerous' was the convoy perceived to be?
Were the actions of the Government deemed to be overreach?
At the beginning, most left-wing/centrist sorts of people saw it as an annoyance, but Ottawa is used to protests. Within the first week or so, people were bringing their kids to the event
After the first week or so (again, going by memory here), I think the general perception of danger started increasing dramatically. Most of the kids were gone, replaced my angry men with nothing better to do. In hindsight, nothing happened during the occupation, but given the overlap with the sorts of people who own guns (remember, the border blockade in Alberta at the same time did see people with guns), I think people were legitimately scared. The police certainly were too scared to do anything!
There was also a scare at the time at an apartment building in Centretown where someone tried to barricade the doors and light it on fire. This happened during the convoy, and while nothing happened and it seems it may have been unrelated mischief, we can only say that in hindsight. At the time it was very scary. There was another incident where truckers were showing up at a local school and yelling at people.
I think most people supported the Trudeau government in putting an end to it with the Emergencies Act, which later was found to be unconstitutional. It was pretty popular at the time. The general perception was that the federal government was doing what the provincial government (despite what Doug Ford thinks, Ottawa is actually in Ontario!) should have done weeks ago.
It's a strangely American abstraction to focus on this as the animating issue around Trudeau's government and does not reflect Canadian reality on the ground.
This was implemented in October 2021 and wasn't removed AFAIK until May of 2023: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
They can protest (which they did) and Justin Trudeau could have picked up the phone and call Biden and ask to remove the restriction, which at that time of the pandemic was completely useless. Instead, Justin Trudeau played politics, he figured it was much better for him to divide the population on the issue than actually work with its biggest trade partner to remove the restriction.
The level of vitriol reserved for Trudeau on this topic is strange, considering it was US-driven policy.
Also strange considering the vast majority of "vaccine mandate" policy in Canada was provincial in jurisdiction, and the federal gov't only had control over ports and borders, so really didn't do much on the "mandate" file outside of that.
The reality is that this convoy was targeted for Ottawa and the Canadian govt because that govt was seen as weak and more easily undermined. The chief organizers are far right radicals whose previous involvements had been around protesting climate change initiatives and in favour of the oil and gas sector ("yellow vest" convoy in favour of pipelines and stuff)
The same kinds of protests done on the US side would have been met with far more severe consequences.
Is KD unhealthy slop or delicious, and how do you feel about adding hot dogs or other toppings?
It might be an English Canadian thing. My partner is French Canadian and thinks its disgusting.
It actually is disgusting, but you and I know it's that good kind of disgusting.
Now ... ketchup on KD... this i cannot let stand
docs: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/URI/Fragment/Te...
your link: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/debanking-and-debunki...
Find this extremely annoying, especially in search results: I want to start at the beginning of the article/post, and not some random place in the middle—which is where the highlighted snippet in the search results are from, but not helpful for learning the larger context.
It also tends to mess up URLS that you may want to copy-paste as it has that text parameter garbage at the end (often with a sizeable amount of text that needs to be removed).
This seems like a pretty big conclusion to reach based on one article and one topic, no? Especially when you, in the same sentence, also recognize that you don't follow Canadian politics?
The handling of the trucker protest is not why he resigned. It is not why he is unpopular.
I think we need to be careful when reading these opinions to not mix up Americans’ views, Russian trolls with legitimate Canadian discourse.
Not necessarily always far-right, but almost obsessively anti-establishment.
> It's a story of everyone going way too far.
> The government(s) went way overboard with Pfizer proof of purchase QR codes to get lunch. Especially when uptake was 80%+
> They also went overboard by locking down again over the holidays when everyone was already catching the most contagious Omicron. People not being able to go to a gym to stay fit, that already needed a barcode, swayed a lot of the public that things were going on too long.
> But the obnoxiousness of the truckers also went too far for too long. The news of rifles and arrests in Alberta was (obviously) too far.
> I don't have a citation on hand, but at one point more than a third of Canadians did support either the truckers explicitly or their aims, and that's a higher percentage than voted for the current governing party. Support was higher among younger people, sometimes over 50%. But this percentage decreased as time went on.
> The government also completely failed to act diplomatically or to de-escalate the situation. Instead we had inflammatory rhetoric and a focus on some silly flags (which should be condemned, but a lot of people have doubts as to their sincerity, and I've seen some pretty gross signs against the unvaxxed too)
> Some people, even in this comment section, take their rhetoric and opposition too far.
> There is no doubt in my mind that the more time passes, the more we will look at Canada's response to the pandemic (especially in its later years) as a horrendous failure that harmed trust in public health, harmed social cohesion, and harmed our democratic and civil institutions. Everyone failed and everyone suffered as a result.
Quebec did impose curfews, and overall had the strictest restrictions by a long way. Around the time of the protests there were plans to tax or fine the unvaccinated and big box retailers were already restricting access to all parts of the store save for the pharmacy.
Meanwhile Trudeau did what... airports and borders. The feds influence here was not high. ArriveCAN was a debacle, obviously. But the trucker thing was US initiated.
I don't think there's anything the feds could have done to head this off. They couldn't make the trucker vax thing not happen, not with Biden insisting on it. They had no control over what was happening in workplaces and schools across the country. Their biggest fault, I think, was being weak -- which the opposition took advantage of to create mayhem and try to bring the govt down.
That the people organizing the protest were in part former oil industry lobbyists and had previously been involved in climate change denying anti-carbon tax protests should also make one pause about what the motivations might be and where the money might be coming from, as well?
Regardless, I think we agree: by January with Omicron showing that it would transmit like crazy regardless of vaccine, mandates everywhere should have been dropped.
What the federal government could have at least tried, in my opinion, was to be humble and release the tension. Trudeau's sanctimoniousness manifested itself too strongly and only escalated the situation, which he had seen coming earlier in the year by calling mandates "divisive" - presumably before polling numbers showed that Canadians are mostly a compliant bunch who didn't have much time for tinfoil hat types (research by UBC and VCH later showed that those already disadvantaged, such as the homeless, were vaccinated at a lower rate than the general population and disproportionately impacted by mandates. I'd love to link citations here but finding 2-3+ year old studies and articles is painful) Instead, several of Trudeau's statements at this time, including "do we tolerate these people" became rallying cries for the populists.
I guess they could have maybe done some changes in tone -- but they may also have been seen by the population as giving into what were frankly seen by most as fringe radicals.
And finally, the actual leaders of the convoy would not have been interested. This wasn't their first rodeo. They wanted to bring the govt down, and not because of COVID but because of everything -- they had previously been in Ottawa trying to pull a similar thing around "pipelines" and carbon tax.
Uh really? Is this another version of “Both sides” claiming you don’t know the pulse whilst amplifying a more right leaning, niche, view?
> I don't really know what sins or political circumstances have led Trudeau to this point
> Personally, I'm glad to see him gone
Why do people do this? You don't keep up with Canadian politics and you don't know what led Trudeau to this point, yet you're glad he's gone? Is it not OK anymore to just not have opinions either way, and people have to take a stance on everything?
Now it's all "You should be a 51st state" and "Oh your Trudeau is a COMMUNIST and needs to GO!"
Trade war against Canada can have pretty dire consequences, and so putting aside all the other things people say about Trump... the fact of the matter is he slapped massive tariffs on us last time around and is talking about doing worse this time around... so we have pretty 1st hand legit concerns
- Wow, for no reason you're glad to see him gone?
people who are geniuses at one thing may be completely out of their depth in other areas
I think this is sadly a demonstration of one of those
Your personal opinion seems to be completely uninformed or misinformed, by the way you tried to frame it as something done to truckers instead of what it actually was: lifting a blockade.
It's even more baffling when taken into account the alleged motivation: COVID-19 restrictions.
> I'm not on the pulse of Canadian politics, (...)
It shows.
- Britain's Tory defeat.
- India's and Hungary's main party still winning, but by less than expected. India's main party no longer holds a majority in Parliament.
- In South Korea, the liberal opposition has won the majority of seats in the National Assembly.
Even in developing countries, incumbent disadvantage is almost everywhere. Look at the map in https://abcnews.go.com/538/democrats-incumbent-parties-lost-.... And in a couple examples where the majority gained (Mexico, Dominican Republic, Moldova) they are the left.
It's not a fun time, and I'd hate to be "in charge"
You can just lie at a velocity never seen before on this planet, spread falsehoods via social media, breed outrage, spread conspiracies and then elected.
It's disgusting.
"The bitterness and rivalries seen in the partisan 1796 campaign got worse in the 1800 rematch between Adams and Jefferson. At one point in that race, Jefferson’s supporter, notorious pamphleteer James Calendar, claimed that Adams was a hermaphrodite, while Adams’ people said Jefferson would openly promote prostitution, incest, and adultery..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_tan_suit_controve...
I follow US politics regularly, but I hadn't heard of this so I don't know how well it's known... but it has it's own page so maybe I'm in the minority here.
That and his choice of mustard, and other things. The "Thanks, Obama!" ads, and so on
Unfortunately the bitter partisan divide really amped up in that period, and we're living with the fallout still.
Probably big in some circles, unnoticed in others.
no one out of red states in the mid-west or south heard jack about "jade helm" but it stirred the pot for a while.
that's the whole point of ad-driven social media: you can target exact demographics at exact times. and it works, even here on HN.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jade_Helm_15_conspiracy_theori...
When Trudeau first took office, he was the meme of being Canada's young and handsome PM, and he enjoyed a good few years of "honeymoon" period that many leaders can only wish for.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=2015+justin+trudeau+handsome&df=20...
Let's face it. Most problems require patient approaches. Often changes that are made won't show their effects until years or decades later. Unfortunately that encourages short term thinking towards the next election in government and population alike.
“Trudeau to resign as prime minister after Liberal leadership race”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-news-conference-1.7...
(The new link and headline are now accurate and reflect the actual situation.)
The Liberals under J.T. has proposed a ban on assault style weapons (not assault weapons, mind you which are already banned) that so far has cost over $70M without guns being collected. The estimate cost is over $800M to collect them.
The last time we had a gun control fantasy was also under the Liberals. They proposed a long gun registry that they estimated would cost $2M a year. By the time it was cancelled 20 years later, the total cost was over $2B.
Leftists want to be armed for community defense (and because Marx and other leftist writers wrote about the importance of being armed).
That said, if I show up at the range with a pride flag on my rifle people lose their shit about it, so I guess we have a ways to go before we've got left-right solidarity there.
Since Trudeau has been elected the likelihood of purchasing a home or finding a job has drastically reduced and continues to fall. Rising tides raise all boats, given that the rent has risen everywhere too.
This creates a divide between the have and have-nots of property ownership and public or private employment. This divides ends in the individuals who have are happy since their investment skyrocketed while the have-nots are left with no hope for their future.
As for employment, the primary job growth is in public sector (government jobs) which are ultimately a parasitic value add to the economy.
Given this, it's easy to see the negative sentiment in Trudeau and his cabinet. This sentiment seems to have hit a crescendo with the recent release of the over-shot budget deficit.
Thoughts?
and prayers!
IMO, altering immigration levels would have the most tangible affect on the housing and jobs (unsure about the US). I'm not bullish on the idea that we can build residences quickly and the government spending is hard to control with poor financial auditing among the current administration.
Washington D.C. now is only behind SF and Seattle in average income. If you want money you either work for a sector that is booming or the government.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-gdp-per-capita-rich-...
https://economics.td.com/ca-productivity-bad-to-worse
https://financialpost.com/opinion/justin-trudeau-legacy-coul...
I guess it always ends bad if you stick around long enough.
As you've already concluded, the answer is absolutely not. The Canada I grew up with, and mind you my family are immigrants from the 90s and early 2000s ourselves, is completely shattered.
What happened?
But I could frame it much simpler than that - Canada, at least in cities of modest sizes and up, is rapidly transitioning from a high-trust to a low-trust society.
An anecdote: my sister is more than 10 years younger than me, she's currently attending the same university as I did over a decade ago; in the span of less than half a year, she's got 2 bikes stolen - her original bike with front wheel removed to bypass the lock in late summer 2024, then the entire lock cut to steal her replacement bike in December; this would be inconceivable to me during my time living in the same town.
One of these things is not like the others. Could you elaborate on how 'far left ideology' relates to the others in terms of the supposed fall of our country?
We do have fringe parties that are far-left, that basically get a handful of votes a year, and we have one far-right party, the People Party of Canada, that gets enough votes to occasionally get some news coverage.
Yet, apparently one will instead sidestep the discussion entirely. Frankly the more you've tried to answer the question the less you actually answer it...
I don't see how "rapidly transitioning from a high-trust to a low-trust society" or "she's got 2 bikes stolen ... this would be inconceivable to me during my time living in the same town" reflect failures in Canadian government at all, really.
Has societal trust actually increased anywhere in the developed world? Sure, our governments have had their share of failures, but it would actually take an extraordinary vision and effort to increase societal trust as technology and population advance.
Is it possible your sister had a shockingly unlucky semester? Or that your world model was simply naive and wrong 10 years ago? Hard to say since the anecdote isn't really evidence of anything.
Why does Japan need separate trains for women, and why can the shutter sound on Japanese phones not be turned off?
It seems like a pretty likely outcome of high population growth!
> anyone that claims theft has increased is just imagining things
Anyone that claims an anecdote is data is just bullshitting, actually.
I could go on, but there's a clear apparent trajectory to these experiences.
[1] https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/a-thief-will-think-twice-some-tor...
In principle, what sort of hard evidence is gathered that could establish the point?
Mass immigration and increasing wealth disparity are much more relevant.
Judging from your other comments, you're either wilfully ignorant or actively dishonest, can't tell which, and frankly don't care either way. All I know is it'd be a complete waste of time to try to convince you.
And if you don't, you... don't deserve to know?
> you're either wilfully ignorant or actively dishonest
I think "willful ignorance" is a good description of accepting impossible-to-verify anecdotes of internet comments as evidence of societal change, personally. But I'm realizing we don't have the same goals in the conversation so I understand why it feels pointless to continue.
Japan. Again, depending on where in the country, but things like muggings and drunk driving have drastically decreased in the last 35 years.
The CAD is sitting at about $0.70 USD right now, which isn't really outside of it's typical range, and not really unexpected given the difference in interest rate now between Canadian & US interest rates. If you look at historical prices it looks more like business-as-usual, the CAD usually bounces between 0.70-0.80 USD.
I can't. Seems like something else has been going on. Potentially you could name Ireland, by becoming a tax haven, screwing over everyone else instead.
* https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/why-...
* https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-us-recovery-from-covi...
I spend my time between East-Asia and Europe, with one foot firmly in each of them, giving me a different perspective showing that Canada is the norm, not the outlier, which would be the US if there were to be one.
I still didn't expect it though, I thought here people would realize authoritarians aren't being voted in everywhere because the populace think things have been improving.
I’m not sure how much more obvious these issues could be. I’m even more unsure of why you’re flat out denying them. The only reasonable explanation is that it’s related to some deeply held ideology or dogma of yours.
I myself am doing quite well financially, but I am still quite unhappy with the current situation because of the devastating effects of inflation and increased housing costs specifically, have had on younger generations (despite the fact that it financially benefits me personally)
Lower Income, High Prices, Less Options.
I'm in a similar position that I'm personally doing okay but almost everyone I grew up with has had to either leave Canada for the US, had to live with their parents into their 30s or more to very remote / rural areas to afford life.
If everyone is doing better objectively but have been hammered with propaganda so much that they subjectively believe they're doing worse, how do you square that?
I'd argue there's an easy solution in getting rid of the propagandists that are making everyone sad, so twitter, facebook etc.
Are you successful this way?
Have you considered the possibility that the metrics we use to decide whether "countries are better off" don't match the values of their citizens?
But it does sometimes work if you remind them.
But I do anecdotally agree with your point as a whole: it feels like there has been a slowing or potentially reversal of progress. Perhaps to be expected given the pandemic though.
My second homebase is in one of the countries you named. I can tell you that not even 10% of the population would agree with you. Across the political spectrum. No idea that you're basing it on. Crumbling infrastructure, housing worse than Canada, ever increasing problems with immigration.
The US I could potentially agree with, it is the outlier, though debatable.
Ireland I talked about.
Norway is laughable to bring up, sorry. Might as well bring up Saudi Arabia.
If you'd been to Poland and Greece you'd know they're nowhere near "similarly wealthy" countries wrt Canada, entirely different tier. This reveals you haven't really spent time there.
Singapore is a city-state. I'm sure we can find a city in Canada that's doing better. And from what I know, Singaporeans too are majority unhappy with their country compared to 2015, so not sure what you're basing it on.
This might be splitting hairs, but I think this is more about the strength of USD than the weakness of CAD. I don't know that you can say CAD has "collapsed" when every other major currency has seen a similar (or worse) drop compared to USD over the last 10 years.
That high dollar didn't do any positive things for Ontario & Quebec's export oriented manufacturing sector though, which is why I put "benefited" in quotes.
The largely conservative provinces have done a very good job of blaming Trudeau and immigration for problems that are entirely their own.
At least for housing I see the average home prices in each category (condos, townhomes, detached) still higher in Vancouver than Toronto (when googling a bit, I found https://wowa.ca/reports/canada-housing-market with some data. But there's probably lots of real estate related sites with more).
Good question. Let me know if you find some. My assertion is anecdotal, I have FOAF doctors who have moved to BC.
No. Immigration reduces available housing. Immigration overloads the health care system. Immigration strains the education system. Immigration creates ethnic enclaves that are hard to police.
Immigration is a federal responsibility. Trudeau and the Liberals are to blame.
Here's a very good 55 point plan to fix housing: https://www.ontario.ca/page/housing-affordability-task-force...
BC implemented far more of those points than Ontario has, and succeeded in changing Vancouver's housing costs from ~2X Toronto's to 1X Toronto's.
And P.S. the immigration surge was mostly in student visa's, driven by Colleges under provincial jurisdiction.
If it was one or two provinces you would be correct, but when every province is facing the same issue(s), then the turd starts to stick to the feds... The immigration issue is a prime example, he announced higher than normal targets but didn't consult or work with the provinces about this, which caused many provinces to be taken by surprise and have their social systems overwhelmed by the influx of people. Many of these same systems where still recovering from covid... so yea recipe for disaster.
Previous govts had a minister who's only job was managing provincial-federal relations and making sure the feds and libs moved in sync
The feds run the RCMP, they set most criminal laws and sentencing, bail policy etc. As Poilievre repeats ad naseum, the same 40 repeat offenders are arrested thousands of times in Vancouver. It doesn't matter how good a job the police do if the justice system refuses to punish them.
I don't know what are the problems we're facing in education but I don't think that is on the top of the list of why Canadians are feeling frustrated with the Liberals.
"March 2016, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Obama instructed their respective cabinet members responsible for international trade to explore all options for resolving the trade dispute.[32] Canada's international trade minister, Chrystia Freeland, said that "what we have committed to is to make significant, meaningful progress towards a deal—to have the structure, the key elements there a 100 days from now"."
Then:
"April 24, 2017, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said his agency will impose new anti-subsidy tariffs averaging 20 percent on Canadian softwood lumber imports, a move that escalates a long-running trade dispute between the two countries...
"On April 25, 2017, the Trump administration announced plans to impose duties of up to 24% on most Canadian lumber, charging that lumber companies are subsidized by the government..."
Then:
"On August 19, 2024, the US raised tariff rates on imports of Canadian softwood lumber products from 8.05% to 14.54%".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_s...
https://www.ipolitics.ca/news/crown-corp-loans-500-million-f...
https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/the-30-billion-...
The government has openly committed to ending all funding for fossil fuels in 2024:
https://www.iisd.org/articles/insight/ending-canada-support-...
FTFY.
There you go, the truth will set you free.
There are many indigenous communities that now have water that are better off than before he was PM.
Speaking for myself I think things in 2019 were better than 2015. The pandemic and things after the pandemic (hi inflation and spiking interest rates) have not been quite so fun but these are global issues and people around the world have had a similar experience. Arguably there is more Trudeau could have done but some things are beyond his reach (eg. Bank of Canada sets interest rates).
If you're a person without an established home you own you probably feel things are disastrously worse than 2015 when you presumed that surely eventually you'd own one. If you already own a home you probably care quite a bit less.
Housing was deeply dysfunctionally broken in the major cities well before Trudeau became PM in 2015 and the lazy status quo approach of his government ensured that the contagion of housing shortage would spread Canada wide. It's mostly Provincial and Municipal governments that are at fault but plenty of fault for the feds too. Despite the fact that Fed housing policy right now is better than it's ever been the damage has been done.
In Vancouver housing prices were already going into their exponential curve in 2014 before this government was even elected or immigration numbers were fiddled with. In the last two years while immigration was increased home prices have been flat. You can have a look at BC Assessment as home values are updated every year. The biggest change comes with 2021 due to ultra low interest rates. As interest rates rose home prices stagnated as expected.
Personally I don't see any connection at all between home prices and immigration though I can imagine rental vacancy and rent prices were impacted in some places (particularly smaller town Ontario) due to the reluctance of municpalities and the province to build more homes and the prevalence of exploitative scam colleges).
That's the problem with J.T., our economic growth has been vastly Government employees.. our private sector is dying..
I hate to be repeat a meme but land value tax would fix this.
Yes! I find it interesting that the Federal government is getting the majority of the blame for these issues when in reality I feel like provinces should be at fault.
Not to say that the federal government is without blame, but I feel like given the current state of healthcare in many provinces, as well as the housing s** show, provincial governments should be primarily held at fault.
Zoning/housing, Healthcare, education... Obviously the immigration loop holes have been an issue as well, but these three are provincial.
Almost like there is a larger macroeconomic force at play.
I agree with you.
Ding ding ding!
Demographics my friend. Somehow what should have been the most predictable thing ever (that people get old over time, changing the age profile of the country), has somehow created issues that are coming as a complete surprise to the government... Healthcare underfunded because people are getting old. Tertiary education overattended leading to a skills mismatch. A large cohort of baby boomers who consistently push for NIMBY style policies because they spent so much on their house that their retirement depends on it...
Policies should be proactive in these fields rather than reactive. I'm of the opinion that many countries /regions struggling with these issues have largely done it to themselves by lack of foresight.
I'm hopeful that it will improve in the future though. Pretty much only able to go up from here! Let's go land value tax!!!
I feel like a single word should explain it, but I know HN abhors single word responses. Trump has threatened tariffs and has mentioned annexing Canada. He's also mentioned buying Greenland, trading Puerto Rico for Greenland, and a bunch of other notions.
It seems to me that he really wants to do some empire building, but hasn't figured out a way that people would actually accept (and isn't interested in the modern version of treaty based "empires").
Panama is only relevant because of the US investment in the Canal and they claim ownership when it suits them and then cry poverty every time investments need to be made.
Panama is currently playing with fire by courting foreign interest that doesn't align with the US, who are effectively their paymasters.
It's not a sudden "empire-building" move by the US. The fact that the canal exists at all has always been because of the US Empire. Panama is playing a dangerous game of FA&FO.
Probably wouldn’t make a state but treat like Puerto Rico where they continue to self govern and citizens can freely move to the USA as they’d have USA passports.
For USA very strategic naval passages and mineral extraction.
It’s not that crazy really and I think there’s a deal that’s mutually beneficial where everyone wins and is better off long term.
That's almost $300 billion dollars?
At least one Canadian business magnate (Kevin O'Leary) has tried to position himself in on the deal and visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago to talk details.
https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/kevin-oleary-donald-t...
Naked sedition would be promoting an actual invasion, not just floating the idea of Canada joining as the 51st state voluntarily and figuring out the logistics of how that could happen (which as far as I can tell is all this is).
We don't have an equivalent of the American Logan Act that would make this illegal.
The whole thing is pretty stupid, but Trump is so chaotic that chances of bad things happening are feeling somewhat above zero.
Or maybe Canada should pull a Russia and sell the Northwest Territories and Yukon. That would generate a lot of interest and money.
This is an interesting statement in that, sadly, the person making the threats is not joking yet to those that have not drunk the kool-aid it is an utter joke of a concept.
Problem is that they aren't the ones in power in the USA.
Who will help Canada? They'll be blockaded on day one by both land and sea. They won't have any food.
Edit: are you suggesting that Europe would not come to the aid of Canada just because it's Canada or because they would be going against the US? The rest of the world could turn around and isolate the US with sanctions and tariffs at a minimum. Would that be worth it for the US?
I doubt they'd adopt outright appeasement, but they would be walking very cautiously.
I do not know what kind of mental gymnastics you make when you say NATO doesn't support the war in Ukraine, but it actually does - with the NATO SG going to Ukraine in a show of support.
AFAIK, there is no precedent to what will happen if a NATO country attacks another NATO country - we came close to that when the Turks and the Greeks almost started fighting a few years back.
The British Armed Forces swear an oath of allegiance to the King not the British government.
If he says go, they go.
It would be a gamble for even Trump that Britain can't launch nukes to defend a Commonwealth ally (obviously that would probably be the end of the UK but we've faced that before, eh).
This conversation is so stupid though.
As I initially asked: would you be willing to end your own country just because you feel like you need to defend another country on another continent against an adversary you have no chance of beating?
In this hypothetical situation the opinions that matter are those of the men in the subs that have just seen their family and friends wiped out.
They've got roughly 120 active warheads to play with and realistically no one is going to stop them all.
So if you add up the damage from that plus the loss of a major trading partner and military ally it kind of seems unlikely to be a profitable venture for anyone involved.
I think it would be a bigger loss for the UK to do something stupid than for the US do to something stupid.
I guess we have to see how it plays out with Greenland - most likely scenario would be he'd go after Greenland first if it ever comes to that.
But it’s all academic anyways. The US military would eagerly lead a coup before willingly attacking the UK or Canada, particularly if non-conventional means are threatened.
Consider that nearly every officer has done several war games or exercises alongside UK or Canadian officers. This is true both of NCOs and senior leadership. Being friendly with their armed forces is institutional. It would be easier to convince the Marines to attack the Army than to convince them to attack their Canadian counterparts.
That doesn’t go away quickly without good reason even with new orders.
An attack on a Anglophone Five Eyes NATO member is militarily close to a civil war and could rapidly lead to a civil war.
Why is this hard to comprehend?
Sanctions hurt everyone involved. If China stopped trading with the US, their economy would tank too.
Furthermore, there are ways around sanctions.
The US is much more self-sufficient than Russia.
It is not hard to comprehend, but it is also not a surefire way to deter an invasion.
And of course remember that not all actors on the stage will behave "rationally"... US leadership especially.
That said, of course it isnt worth it for the US.
>In the case of any contradiction with other international obligations (with the exception of the United Nations, which by Article 7 supersedes NATO), or in military conflict of two NATO members, Article 8 comes into force. This is most important in cases should one member engage in military action against another member, upon which the offending members would be held in abeyance of the treaty and thereby NATO protection as a whole.
which would suit Trump just fine. this isn't a dissuading argument to Trump, and would probably be considered as bonus to his lot.
The only meaningful resistance would come from within the US military, or maybe China would finally venture out of their sphere of influence (although it's more likely they'll use the opportunity to pursue more regional concentration of power).
At least China and Russia only forcibly attacked independent countries that were once united with them.
The US imports pretty much everything consumers consume. Ooops
The US would have nobody to sell anything to. Ooops
The US is now in a local conflict that a very large % of citizens does not support. What happens after the next election?
It is a fun fictional exercise, ala Man in the Highcastle
There would be significantly less variety, and no tea or coffee, but that is not the same as not having any food.
Also, a president doesn't have to declare war to engage in military conflict.
"For the United States, Article One, Section Eight of the Constitution says "Congress shall have power to ... declare War." However, that passage provides no specific format for what form legislation must have in order to be considered a "declaration of war" nor does the Constitution itself use this term. In the courts, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Doe v. Bush, said: "[T]he text of the October Resolution itself spells out justifications for a war and frames itself as an 'authorization' of such a war."[2] in effect saying an authorization suffices for declaration and what some may view as a formal congressional "Declaration of War" was not required by the Constitution. "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_war_by_the_Unit...
Eg: Nexen was bought by CNOOC with a whole bunch of promises and broke lots of them.
If Poilievre gets elected, will he willingly join the USA? It seems that the world is more and more aligned by political spectrum rather than national allegiance.
When it comes to US - Canada relations, if Canadians decide to be a part of the states, then it’s their will. I don’t support it, but if super majority changes their minds… well, we live in a democracy, and such is the will of people.
Frankly, I think US is in a panic mode as they realize they can’t outcompete China anytime soon by themselves. So they’re trying every possible thing to see what sticks to increase their chances.
China is also in panic mode because of internal issues that stem from the younger generation’s dissatisfaction. Natural fix is to claim some wins to rally and unite people. So the ideas of reunification, playing to win in manufacturing, showing how much better they can overcome the economical problems using their 1B population are on the play now.
For whatever reason, I think the common lives of people who live in countries that play for both sides will be the only ones that get elevated. And frankly, I think, Canada should do the same.
Did it? Stickers or posters saying "keep our Pound!" were common on bus stops and street lights as a kid in the Home Counties in the 90s. Newspapers ran (mostly untrue) stories about market fruit stands needing to sell bananas by the KG rather than by the lb. Both the Tories and Labour had Euroskeptic wings since the 1970s.
Rightly or wrongly, the undercurrent of Brexit was there from the start of the EU and ebbed or flowed based on events of the day.
He could have rested on his laurels knowing history would likely forget his shortcomings & scandals, and be remembered as the prime minister who got us legal weed, navigated the covid pandemic, brought clean drinking water to FN reserves and advanced social programs (childcare, dental care).
Instead he's likely going to be known as the prime minister who had to be forcibly walked to the door by Canadians and his party, while leaving the country in a precarious position during tumultuous times.
I do think Freeland is too tainted by Trudeau now to be a success. Very intelligent woman, but I think her political career is ending. (I should check back on this comment in 5 years)
I think if she wanted she could very well be a contender in the next election cycle.
Poilievre is a career politician who's only professional experience has been as a politician, has no work history to speak of (don't take my word for it, his wikipedia entry details only a job as a collection agent, and that he started a business in 2003 focused on political communications, and then was elected in 2004).
Poilievre has spent the last several years in the lead up to becoming the party leader for the CPC cozying up to the alt-right, supporting the anti-vax movement, and hasn't published any meaningful policy documentation.
Poilievre is basically the last man standing from Stephen Harpers administration (in terms of policies and practices), and has failed to drive or pass any meaningful legislation or policy changes in his 20 year career. His victory in the 2022 CPC leadership campaign was a landslide, but also suffered from allegations of foreign interference from India and China. There is still an outstanding report on foreign interference due on January 31st.
Trudeau's greatest mistake was not implementing the electoral change he campaigned on, which likely would have marked a long term shift toward more left leaning social policies along side centrist fiscal policies, which have typically characterized Canadian society. Unfortunately, unless a very compelling alternative to the CPC emerges in the next 3 months, we will most likely get a government lead by a sock-puppet who lacks any real strength to negotiate with a presumably hostile incoming US administration, and the official party line from other Conservative groups in Canada appears to be appeasement and concession.
It's gonna be a rough couple of years :/
(edited for shoe-in)
Agreed. In an over-simplification,
- first past the post is the best for the Conservatives. (It was best for the Liberals before the Reform & Conservatives merged).
- single transferable is the best for the Liberals
- mixed-member proportional is the best for the NDP
Trudeau thought the electoral commission would give him the STV he wanted, but it was going to deliver MMP that would pretty much guarantee that he would have to coalition with the NDP. So he nixed it. He ended up with an NDP coalition anyways, so he didn't gain anything through the nixing. Instead FPTP is going to result in a Conservative landslide in 2025.
Mulcair was ahead in the polls first half of that election. Trudeau came out of third place to win with his lie about electoral reform and by refusing to answer the question about the religious discrimination laws being introduced in Quebec.
Things could have gone very differently. Mulcair was a much more competent politician than Trudeau, and the NDP platform was more balanced. Though it may have been a challenge for him to assemble a fully competent cabinet.
A wolf in sheep disguise. I didn't want PP to be the next prime minister for comments in parent of the thread, but who else is going to win this running now?
- You don't want PP to be PM
- You're angry at the NDP for not voting to bring Trudeau down (and effectively make PP the PM)
I share your frustration with the NDP under Singh. But I'm not sure what alternative he has, tactically. Voting down the government at this juncture would only have led to an election that would have brought PP to power as PM. Which is notably not in the NDP's interests. (Or, I'd argue, the public's)
But, yes, I understand it tactically. But it's strategically inept. For 4 years the NDP has "won the battle but lost the war" -- all the policy planks they forced the Liberals to adopt will simply be dismantled by the conservatives now.
What they were hoping for is some recognition from the public that the progressive moves made by the Liberals in the last parliament were in fact NDP initiatives forced on them. Instead they're just tarred and feathered with the same image that Trudeau has.
Ronald Reagan and Zelenskyy were ridiculed as an actor in their election campaigns.
Poilievre is a career politician and unproven at the highest office, but that by itself should not disqualify him. Knowing who to delegate to is 90% the job of a good leader -- the other 10% is public speaking and being charismatic.
Trudeau was also a secondary school teacher, acted in a tv movie. He also reputedly worked as a bouncer and worked in various (heavily politically affiliated) non-profits. He had a career before politics.
That said, my primary point is that Poilievre hasn't been a particularly effective politician, and his reputation is largely that of a blowhard who's main appeal is that he is not Trudeau.
Which is a plus considering how much Trump hates Trudeau.
Poilievre gives off too much Milhouse energy, which I'm not sure if good or bad for obsequiousing.
I'm amazed at the dominance he has over his party that has made it possible for him still to be hanging on. Even his resignation is slow motion.
Both the opposition Conservatives and the supporting NDP parties (NDP in particular was holding up the Liberal Minority Govt) have been planning non-confidence motions this month that would result in a new election.
There was no path to victory for Trudeau after that, so the next best move is to resign and hope the liberals can pick a new leader before the next electoral cycle is too far along and avoid the issue the Democrats had by rushing to select a replacement candidate and alienating some portion of voters by doing so.
IMO Chrystia Freeland would be a great pick for the country. She was firm and capable during the NAFTA/USMCA renegotiations, and seems to have stood up against political games from the current administration to her eventual detriment of losing her cabinet position.
Marc Carney certainly has appeal, but I can't help but see him as Ignatief 2.0 and that didn't go well with many Canadians.
Chrystia Freeland was too close to Trudeau for too long (their fallout notwithstanding) to be perceived as anything than Trudeau 2.0
Marc Carney is a (two time!) head of a central bank - he hasn't got a chance in the current anti-elite climate.
Then again I'm on the fence on Freeland, as are most of my circle as anecdotal as that is. Our issues with Trudeau don't completely extend to her, and if she differentiates herself well enough along a few lines she might get more support than traditionally expected from a Trudeau cabinet member.
Or maybe that's wishful thinking. Our alternatives haven't done much in the way of proposing a viable alternative path and have focused almost explicitly on criticizing Trudeau and the parties actions. Its appealing to the "fuck trudeau" flag flyers but I do wonder if centrists will find the CPC appealing without a change in direction and messaging now Trudeau is leaving.
Canadian prime ministers often expire after 10 years for one reason or another
There will likely be an election in 3ish months with a new liberal leader in place of Trudeau
At earliest, May 5th (March 24th parliament comes back, instantly votes no confidence, governor general issues writ the same day, the shortest possible campaign period is 37 days and election day must fall on a Monday).
At latest, Oct 27th (regularly scheduled election is Oct 20th, but that might be delayed by 7 days due to scheduling conflicts - see Bill C-65).
Likely somewhere in between there. All the opposition parties have been signalling that they intend to vote no confidence. Assuming that doesn't change though, there's likely at least a few days lag between parliament coming back, and that happening. The campaign period is likely not to be as short as possible (with an allowable range of 37 to 51 days).
However, our upcoming election is this year. It certainly does not surprise me that Trudeau is stepping down from leader of the Liberal party in light of the polling, since the polls are predicting that if an election were called today, the conservatives would win in such a landslide that I don't think many countries have even seen that before. Of course polling and actual election results are two very different things... but I think the Liberal party sees the writing on the wall. If they hope to have any shot of getting re-elected, they can't do it with Trudeau at the head.
... but that doesn't necessarily mean that we all saw him resigning as PM incumbent coming. He's also proroguing parliament until March. This is probably a move to get the other parties to step back and "STFU"; to not pass any motions during the party shift (particularly related to calling an early election etc).
Lastly, as others have said, the PM position is usually held for an average of 9-10 years (and that's multiple terms .. most incumbents just get re-elected into second and third terms). Trudeau was elected in 2015 so he's about due to exit anyway if we go by averages (though some have served longer).
(slightly off topic: I have no idea why tf my comment got down-voted. I'm not even expressing any personal opinions about Trudeau or politics. I'm just answering the question as factually as I can from the point of view of a Canadian who is observing what is going on.. I have data and sources for everything I said .. including how low Trudeau's approval rating is as well as the polling... the only thing I wasn't sure of is how his rating compares to that of previous PMs. Thing is, I even know people who have voted Liberal their entire lives, and plan to in the upcoming election regardless of who the leader is, and even they can't shut up about how much they despise him. So regardless of your partisan affiliation, I don't think I even said anything that most Canadians would find the least bit controversial).
During his delusional ramblings (and that is no exaggeration) Trudeau said that the GG was persuaded to prorogue to the 25th March because of the no confidence vote held back in December which he survived because the NDP supported him. The NDP no longer will support the Trudeau gov (announced in writing about 10 days after the last vote), coincidentally just as their leader qualifies for a nice parliamentary pension scheme.
The whole thing is a horrible exercise in the worst stereotypes of champagne socialism.
As part of their deal with the Liberals, the NDP had some real power to implement legislation. If an election happened tomorrow the NDP would lose that power.
Unhitching from Trudeau at this moment is a good move for the NDP, they want to distance themselves from Trudeau's unpopularity before the next election. That Trudeau is now leaving benefits them even more, they could conceivably continue to support the government now that it's missing its most unpopular member, or they could pull the plug right away if they think they can steal away some Liberal votes during a snap election
It really isn't - the alternative is it's the most unbelievable happy coincidence.
You have to wonder how blatant the personal moneygrabbing by Lib and NDP leaders has to be before their respective support bases actually accept what is going on in their faces. Those leaders see the parties purely as a way to secure power to use to gain personal wealth at the expense of the populous.
It's not though.The NDP were faced with two choices:
1) Support the Liberals and get some of their policies pushed through 2) Support the Conservatives wish to call an early election in which the Conservative are sure to win a majority leaving the NDP powerless
The reason why the NDP choose this moment to pull their support is that it's an election year, so there's little chance any more NDP policy would be passed. One person's pension (a relatively wealthy person at that) is just a fun partisan talking point for Conservatives.
I think if the liberals can delay the election until October, their results won't be so bad, especially if Trump keeps saying dumb things down in America (as he is prone to do), making alignment with the conservatives less popular (they will still win, just not the huge landslide that they can take now).
Also I think there is a bit of a different here between Harpers Conservatives and Tredeaus Liberals.
In 2015 people were actually really excited and hopeful about Justin Trudeau (sounds weird to say but it is true). He was voted in "positively" based on legalizing cannabis & election reform.
2025 is a very different spot, Pollieve is not a particularly popular politician. The singular reason they will win in a land slide is that people HATE Trudeau in a way I haven't seen in my life.
The liberals really should take a long hard look at themselves and re-evaluate. On a more local level the Ontario Liberals actually just collapsed a while ago and haven't even been relevant in politics ever since.
This isn't just the normal trend.
Harper was widely hated.
I suppose standard procedure in a Westminster parliament is to have a non confidence vote and an election - which is what the opposition parties said would happen when Parliament sits again. Poroguing parliament and having a leadership race is probably a way to try and avoid that or at least go into the election with a less unpopular leader.
Proguing parliament is probably the best thing for the liberal party to avoid an election with an unpopular leader. But I don't think it's good for Canada as it states down Trump's tariffs
Particularly look at the projected Liberal seat count.
This gov was propped up by a supply agreement with the NDP in order to maintain parlimentary confidence. The NDP leader becomes eligible for a generous pension scheme if he stays an MP to some point in February. As such the timing for all this is no coincidence, and people have been expecting this for a while, but it is shocking just how shamelessly self serving it all is.
Was it expected? Eh - kind of. In the last few weeks much of Trudeau's cabinet has resigned or voiced their disapproval. NDP has signaled they would support bringing down the government.
There is no term limit for PM or members of parliament.
They stay on until they lose the support of their party.
He lost the support of his party due to his extreme unpopularity and the impact it will have on the future election. As seen by polls and bye elections.
More often the leader loses party support after an election loss.
However in this case, a loss is so likely and expected to be so bad that his party would rather go to the polls with a different leader.
One of the final nails in the coffin was the resignation of Chrystia Freeland, his last standing ally and Finance Minister.
This video from CBC a couple weeks ago on Freeland explains the rifts in Trudeau's government well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8SuZTLWNlpc
For many months liberal backbenchers have been calling for him to resign. Though obviously not 'likely to happen'
Only weeks ago(mid december) Trudeau refused his own caucus' call to resign. Saying he was staying on to fight for Canadians. Freeland quit with a flaming public letter and he still said he's staying in the game.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberals-renew-calls-trudea...
Didnt really do much, it took weeks more before he finally resigned yesterday. Despite this, still no resignation. Now parliament has been mostly suspended due to the liberal's failure to submit documents. A significant scandal.
The reason his caucus is upset is because the vast majority of them will lose in the next election. Polling suggesting they hold onto ~20 seats in an Ignatief level of fail. Resignation will still be quite unlikely. From a strategic point of view, taking the L election night and then letting a new liberal leader rebuild their reputation over 4 years is the right move.
You'll now have a leadership race where nobody wants the career ending job. The rats that try to fight for it just want their name as prime minister.
Yet here he finally resigned. Change Control dictates it was the gun ban.
The polls post-gun ban put the liberals in single digit seats. It was over for him. The gun ban ended Trudeau.
Low compensation ranges here are in fact in part the fault of fed gov't policy. Industry freaked out about "labour shortage" and the government responded.
The database of LMIA (Labour Market Impact Assessment) applications is public. You can see for yourself how many thousands of software engineering jobs were filled this way. (Including by big "elite" tech companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, etc.) This was deliberate policy to bring in foreign talent from India, China, etc. in order to fill a "shortage" of us, which well, that shortage was less about "can't find someone" as "I can't find someone cheap enough."
In this case I don't actually blame Trudeau or the libs -- they're on the whole too stupid about our sector to understand that in fact these low compensation ranges harm our industry more than they help. I blame corporate interests who have the ear of the gov't and misled them into thinking that somehow this would make Canada "competitive" in information tech.
All it does is force good talent to leave the country, and encourage sweat shops to open up offering mediocre "IT" services.
We're subsidizing our own Canadian students to go through great schools like U Waterloo, etc. and then losing most of them the moment they graduate, as they go to the US on a TN1. And in exchange...
I've been in this industry long enough (25 years) to have seen things go up and down relative to the US a few times. This is the worst it's ever been. Especially because you can no longer make the argument that "I may get paid less but it costs less to live here" -- that ship sailed 10 years ago.
But in this case, yes, I think federal policy is directly implicated.
And in the meantime, housing prices have gone up exponentially. Housing in greater Toronto is more expensive than the Bay Area, but the compensation is far far lower.
I'm not one to blame Trudeau personally, or even immigration per se. I think there's a multitude of factors. But it's best not to deny the situation, which is that in the last few years there's been... problems... in the Canadian SWE labour market.
They are tools that "industry" lobbied for expansion of, and got. Have persisted through both Conservative and Liberal governments for decades, but was expanded markedly under both Harper and (especially) Trudeau.
I guess you’re trying to say there is no money there because of Trudeau ?
Relevant slides are #97 and #101.
Percentage of class with Full time positions outside of Canada: 71.5%
Median Total compensation for US positions is about double the Median Total compensation for Canadian positions.
Currently, this is “Working as Intended” in Canada’s political system.
It's just that in Canada, that continuity plan is reserved for unfortunate deaths. When a PM wants to resign, they basically do what Trudeau did; they announce their party will do a leadership race while they stay on as PM.
It’d cause a crisis with the monarchy but they’re not legally bound to appoint the deputy. Like you said it only applies to special circumstances, I was just addressing the legal mechanism by which it happens (as the OP talked about a PM dropping dead).
In this case he intends to stay on until his party selects a new Prime Minister
It has been, in the past customary for leaders of parties that fail to win a majority (after being in a minority) mandate to resign. That Trudeau a) called the last election at all and b) failed to resign after getting the same result as when they entered into it... is frustrating.
It certainly created an appearance of weakness that I suspect fed into the situation with the convoy.
Also probably tactically stupid, because he got to hold the blame for all the post-COVID problems.
Amongst the Canadian PMs I've experienced, Chretien, Martin, Harper, Trudeau made the most impactful and positive policy changes (eg. legal cannabis, childcare) while navigating the country through the challenges of covid and Trump NAFTA renegotiations.
The negatives of his term are recent and largely tied to global issues being faced by many countries right now (eg. inflation) and so I expect future historians to hand wave these away.
By all accounts he will be looked at as one of the worst considering the position Canada was in at the start and end of his government.
Inflation, unemployment, housing, homelessness, healthcare, crime, national unity, the overall economy. .. Just all of these things are significantly worse than 2015.
With that being said I do think cannabis + child care were both wins... but like at what cost.
Also feels like with cannabis all of society was already trending there seemed like a very easy win.
Then with childcare it is a win but it is also complicated as many daycares have unenrolled from the program because it doesn't cover enough of the cost.
Canadian politics is the Spiderman meme with local, provincial and federal governments all pointing their fingers at each other.
If healthcare in your province sucks blame your Premier.
Coming at it from a separate angle, it would be quite a coincidence if it just so happened that every single province in the country, over decades, has had their healthcare systems failing in basically the same way with the same problems for end users, despite having totally different geographies, economies, even languages, run by all kinds of different provincial parties across the extremes of the political spectrum. The parsimonious explanation is that there's a systematic issue in Canadian Healthcare as it's defined or operates across the country.
It isn't though. These problems that are now being hard-felt in Toronto and Vancouver have plagued the Atlantic provinces for decades.
There is! It’s because healthcare is expensive and 20th century social democracy is out of fashion. Your premier can increase expenditures by improving healthcare infrastructure, or simply kick the can down the road for the next government to deal with. Many voters don’t like taxes or debt, so the latter is an easier sell.
Occasionally, the premier can roll a 20 on persuasion and suggest that it’s the Prime Minister’s problem too.
Now, the Prime Minister could look to changing the CHA and increasing services/taxes, but it’s probably too much of a can of worms to attempt to fix in our current political climate.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/808294/unemployment-rate...
That's 110,738 new people on pay roll - but not that are actually productive for the economy, they are counted but are not the same as free market jobs - they're actually the opposite and a negative to the economy.
This also doesn't account for the economic harm and suffocation to local Canadians already here struggling to find work, much of the work instead going to the millions of temporary foreign workers and those on student visas.
First off, the claim of ‘millions of TFWs’ is pure hyperbole. TFWs currently make up around 4.1% of the workforce [1], or roughly 1.1M workers—not ‘millions.’ Ironically, if TFWs are such a large share of the workforce, the federal job increase (~110,000) seems even less significant by comparison.
And it’s odd that Grok is used to cite federal employment numbers, but you conveniently ignore its data on TFWs or international students, who are key contributors to Canada’s economy. Cherry-picking data like this only distracts from the real issues.
[1] https://www.statcan.gc.ca/o1/en/plus/7457-temporary-foreign-...
Otherwise you missed my points of the economic harm of TFWs displacing Canadians already here looking for work but won't accept work
The same "debate" is going on passionately in the US in regards to the H-1B program.
Otherwise I'll avoid engaging further with you since you "cherrypicked" what you read of mine, and then you try to subtly demonize/put me down by claiming "in an attempt to overwhelm the conversation."
The link you posted doesn't agree with statcan's website
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/241206/dq241...
Second it's hard to compare unemployment rates to 10 years ago with the rise of the gig economy. "Employment" ain't what it used to be
The Feds can't step in sad say "no". The immigration problem is largely on the provinces. The Federal immigration numbers have grown much more slowly.
https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/ne...
> The OINP recognizes and nominates people for permanent residence who have the skills and experience the Ontario economy needs, and the Government of Canada makes the final decision to approve applications for permanent residence.
(https://www.ontario.ca/page/ontario-immigrant-nominee-progra...)
https://www.cicnews.com/2022/07/canadas-unemployment-rate-dr...
They went crazy with the TFW program, LMIA, and immigration generally in order to reduce inflation. But this is not the kind of inflation that ordinary Canadians think of when we think of inflation -- grocery prices, etc. It's the inflation that business leaders freak out about: wage inflation.
And so the gov't acted, and increased the supply of skilled and unskilled labour, and here we are.
It's amusingly also the same inflation that led to Trudeau Sr. getting in a pile of trouble in the late 70s, too. In that case instead of immigration they tried the ill-fated "wage and price controls" legislation... which was... not popular.
(But honestly, I'd say a lot of these businesses deserve to fail if they can't afford to pay minimum wage workers.)
Similarly, the majority of industry growth has been Federal jobs - from Grok:
"Since Trudeau took office in 2015, the size of the federal public service has grown by approximately 43%. By March 31, 2024, the federal government's payroll included 367,772 employees, up from 257,034 in 2015."
43% increase; paid for by the public.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/437730/employment-in-can... [2] https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/241206/dq241...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_public_debt#/media/Fi...
Would love to see explanations of downvotes since this is factually true...
I moved from a proportional-representation country to a FPTP one (Canada) and it's so much better to have a specific individual who is my MP.
Back where I was born, there's a grey and anonymous party list of people selected by extremely dubious internal party political means. I never felt the slightest bit represented; and the political process was completely opaque.
Now I have a dude with a newsletter, an email address, and an office.
Comparing FPTP to a worse system and decided FTPT is awesome while ignoring its known and widely discussed flaws surprises me. Its not really open for debate these days although people love to reject reality.
Do you realize how alienating this shit is to a centrist?
Its not they disagree with _me_, they disagree with the overall state of political science and its years of research into the outcomes of systems, not just what people "want"
Whenever I see something is not open for debate, I view it with a lot more skepticism. Almost always, this type of framing, to make an idea untouchable, leads to abuse. We saw this in a lot of the “trust authorities” type messaging in the pandemic.
The studied and understood outcomes of FPTP systems in the real world have all shown similar issues trending towards 2 party systems, being susceptible to vote splitting on one side of the spectrum and leading to 'strategic' instead of 'idealistic' voting.
There are worse systems by far, and better systems. Ignoring the bad because you can think of a single worse system is ignoring reality.
What? Of course it is! There are physicists looking for the unified theory who hypothesize that there may be a unified way of understanding all the forces. IANA physicist by any stretch so maybe I've misunderstood the Great Courses and books I've read, but gravity is actually quite poorly understood to us currently.
But the broader point about things not being open for debate is dangerous, and I think you unintentionally demonstrated a real-life reason why. If we stop questioning gravity and trying to understand it's cause better (which IMHO primiarly happens through reasoned, intelligent debate) then we stagnate, and stagnation can be dangerous as from there it's a short hop and a skip to regression.
If you want to make the argument though that some things aren't open for debate, I think there are stronger cases, like the Cartesian "I think therefore I am" is hard (though not impossible) to argue against because it forces the thinker to make arguments for their own non-existence, which is a tall order for a person who by definition must exist in order to do so.
That was my point. Gravity as a force exists, but the understanding of that force is still being developed. We might even change the name, but there is no doubt the force exists.
I should have worded it better. Extrapolating from that is probably not achieving much.
Also what came to mind was picturing Einstein doing his thought experiment where he was in an elevator at various levels of acceleration, and his observation that there was no way to tell the difference between the force felt from gravity vs. the acceleration. That to me feels a lot like quesitoning the "existence" of gravity! But I don't think we're really disagreeing, more were just operating with different definitions in mind of "existence."
Appreciate the discussion!
Maybe this issue is technically open for debate, but the enormously strong consensus from experts in the field weighs to one side of the issue.
The Anonymous Party list, and opaque process are not inherent factors on any of the replacements for FPTP, in fact the only one WITH the list was supposed to be an open list, and that was the system with the least political support.
Ranked/alternate voting, STV and other options directly address the issues with FPTP without introducing the drawbacks of MMP/unelected leaders being selected for seats.
Countries with multiple small parties frequently seem to collapse into political torpor where nothing ever changes.
2 parties means power tends to jump back and forth due to the recent ruling party doing badly vs the opposition actually providing an alternative and compelling change. This means parties tend to "lose" more than actually "win" elections.
2 dominant parties when one side of the spectrum is split among 2-3 parties tends to allow a smaller minority to achieve stronger governments which is not representative. I.E the split on the right in the 90's allowed the Liberals to have many successive majority governments despite less than 50% of support for many of those elections. In the aughts the alliance and PC merger turned that around and now the NDP and Liberals tend to split the left to a degree and the right can win a strong majority with 35-38% of the actual vote. This doesn't benefit any side long term.
"getting things done" isn't always the best metric for a political party, especially when they don't have the public support for their changes.
STV or various other methods that allow proportional results while maintaining current representation and government size were the best outcome, but didn't benefit the liberals so they dropped it.
Ranked voting is a majoritarian variant of FPTP that doesn't fix many of the flaws of FPTP. There is still the flaw of "favourite betrayal" that induces a need to vote "strategically".
Single Transferable Vote involves ranking candidates but is a Proportional System.
STV does a much better job of it and is why I was strongly in support of STV over AR/MMP or other options.
You are all in the same boat in a sense that’s more local and less abstract than with proportional rep.
Which is why voting needs to be effective, and FPTP is exactly why there are so many "safe" ridings for the various parties.
You're mixing things up. FPTP isn't what gives you "a dude with a newsletter, an email address, and an office" and prop-representation doesn't prohibit having one either.
In fact, in a first-past-the-post system with a minority government you often end up giving disproportionate power to the third place party, in terms of the popular vote (in this case the NDP) because they hold up the government and can make significant demands in doing so. This has been absolutely borne out in Canada.
I prefer the term: two-party state
It was always dysfunctional. It's just that it wasn't noticed early on.
see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ns7EsDVNwA&t=262s for a view that every Canadian knew was coming since last summer.
What we've been watching for the last 18 months has been the slow collapse of the governing Liberal Party, led by Justin Trudeau (LPC) - Polling and projections have been turning heavily against the LPC since last summer (2023), and the internal party cracks started showing after a by-election (special election, to fill an empty seat) loss in Toronto this summer and then one in Montreal not long after. Both Toronto and Montreal are considered the LPC's "heartland" and losses there suggest that the polls are correct in predicting a huge defeat for the LPC in a general election. A few Members of Parliament (MPs) began pressuring Trudeau to step down as party leader (and therefore Prime Minister (PM)) and some announced that they would not run again. At time of writing, a third by-election has just been lost by the Liberals.
The next Canadian general election must be held no later than October 2025. That is because the last election was in late 2021. That 2021 election led to a "minority government" in which the Liberal Party won the most individual seats (districts, ridings, constituencies, etc.) but not more than half of them. As a Westminster Parliament with plurality voting (First Past the Post, winner-takes-all) coalitions are not common in Canada, and the minority government usually operates on a vote-by-vote basis with other parties, while allowing their party to form the government. Some votes, notably ones about the budget, are called "confidence votes" and if one fails, the government has "lost the confidence of the House of Commons" and must either call an election or allow opposition parties to try to gain the confidence of the house and form a new government.
Minority governments do not usually last the full length before another general election must be called by law. This one has lasted longer than average because the LPC signed an agreement with a smaller party called the NDP. The NDP demanded some new welfare policies such as subsidized dental care and some medications and in return would support the LPC in confidence votes. The NDP's leader, Jagmeet Singh, announced this fall that he was ending the agreement with the LPC and would only support the government on a case-by-case basis. This is likely to save some of his party's own polling numbers, as they have also faltered (the junior party in coalitions or similar situations almost always fall more than the senior party, worldwide) but do result in the NDP looking weak as they heavily criticize the LPC government yet vote to keep it governing the country. The NDP do not want an election right now for several reasons: their own polling numbers are not good, they can squeeze more out of a minority LPC than the Conservatives who are strong favourites to win the next election (we'll get to them, don't worry), the party machine is short on money (they recently spent a lot of their funds on a close provincial election in British Columbia) and possibly because Singh wants to ensure himself and a few of his MPs have been elected long enough to meet the minimum requirement for a government pension. This last point has been heavily debated and used in Conservative attack ads, so make of it what you will.
So, what are Canadians unhappy about? The biggest item is cost of living - most things boil down to how much it costs for a roof over your head and food in your fridge. Housing costs have been astronomical in Vancouver and Toronto for decades, but have been rapidly increasing across the country. Another is immigration - like many countries, Canada's population is aging and there has long been a cross-partisan consensus that immigration is a great way to counter this. But since the pandemic the LPC increased immigration levels massively, especially in 2 sectors: student visas which were being taken advantage of by "diploma mill" shoddy private colleges that promised immigrants a pathway to residence, and low-skill temporary foreign workers (TFWs) who are employed in fast food or other entry-level positions. Not only has this put much more strain on the housing supply in major urban areas like Toronto or Vancouver, but it also brings down wages and facilitates abuse of these unfortunate people who just want to build a better life for themselves and their family. The LPC has also faced a lot of scandals. Every government is corrupt and has scandals, but there have been a lot from this government: from SNC-Lavalin and WE Charity earlier, to ArriveCAN and a cabinet minster lying about indigenous heritage to win government contracts more recently. As in the US, opioids have been devastating to Canadians, with tent encampments and overdose deaths no longer limited to just Vancouver's infamous Downtown Eastside. Police departments complain that the justice system is not responding well to repeat offenders either due to bail reforms or bleeding-heart judges. Finally there's the anti-incumbent bias we've seen in elections worldwide throughout 2024 and the Canadian trend of voting out a government after around a decade in power.
So let's get into who are likely to come next - the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC), led by Pierre Polievre since 2022. The CPC was last in power under Stephen Harper from 2006-2015 and has a lot of support in the western provinces of Canada, plus competes with the LPC and NDP in the suburbs of major cities. Polievre is a pugilistic career politician who has very successfully channelled the anger Canadians are feeling into a commanding polling lead. Polievre has been called a populist because he has levied much more criticism of the LPC government than policy suggestions, and for his schtick of reducing issues into "verb the noun" such as "axe the [carbon] tax", "build the homes" and "end the crime." But listening to his earlier speeches in Parliament suggest that Polievre is much more of a policy "wonk" than his current campaigning suggests.
When Parliament returns in March with a new Liberal Party leader (and Prime Minister), it is almost certain to be defeated immediately and an election will be called.
Trudeau will ask for, and likely get, a prorogation to give them time to choose a new leader. Add the 51 days for the election and it's likely to be a fall election.
> Trudeau said Gov. Gen. Mary Simon granted the request to prorogue Parliament until March 24.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/prorogue-parliament-canada-...
After the end of March, no budget or supply has passed the HoC, hence that date.
I mean it is kinda obvious that the system in western democracies is structurally flawed such that there's a selection bias for crooks and incompetent assholes (lobbying, i.e. legalized bribery), but still, how come the bad guys always seem to win? Or is this just a symptom of a deeper malady of modern society?
I've been working on a side project over the holidays related to this, but nothing to share yet unfortunately. Suffice to say, I would love it if we could frame discussions around specific policy issues, and focus on listening to one another and prioritizing and agreeing on problems as a first step before jumping straight into political rhetoric and speaking only to one's own base or those who already agree with you.
Also somewhat related - the history of decline of political discourse is staggering. Apparently in the US, Abraham Lincoln used to debate by having 90 minutes of uninterrupted complex analysis. This has been replaced by modern debate formats like those popularized by the Jubilee YouTube channel which optimize for 10 second clips.
Interestingly, there is a counter movement where long-form interviews are becoming popular again among niche crowds who actually want to hear and discuss issues. Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, Lex Friedman, Sam Harris, Destiny to name a few. I don't think we've seen the end of the changes for these discussion mediums. Hopefully we'll see changes for the better!
What kind of project?
>Interestingly, there is a counter movement where long-form interviews are becoming popular again among niche crowds who actually want to hear and discuss issues
Indeed. Personally, I wish we could have that kind of content, but edited to remove the filler (redundancy, time spent reasoning out a position) while still accurately representing nuanced views and the evidence for them.
We bought a place 2 years ago and are in the process of fixing up (it was used as a vacation home).
Have you considered Canada?
I don't think there is a single right place for everyone. Each person needs to do their own checklist of requirements.
That's certainly not the norm. Where, more specifically?
There's certainly more wealth available if you have the means to get it though.
Genuinely curious whats better under Canadian system for the young and old.
The young, old, and those too unhealthy to work full-time. And to answer your question: a better social safety net, IMO.
Edit: Because this topic is flamebait, I'm preemptively declaring that I'm not going to argue about my opinion. YMMV.
The Federal government even had the gall to refuse my 2 year old's passport renewal for example because I only paid the renewal fee, and not an additional fee for the passport getting destroyed before expiration date that was buried under 10 pages of fine print that I missed because we were homeless with a toddler. And they already had my CC# on the application anyway, but because I didn't explicitly mark down the extra fee, the application was refused.
Now we've found a new home in a new town at our own expense, and we can't see a doctor. My 2 year old can't see a doctor. There's not enough doctors and practices won't take on new patients unless you go on a years-long wait list. This is our "free" healthcare. If you're dying, you can go to an emergency room and wait for 8 hours to see a doctor. If you need anything routine you're fucked if you don't have a family doctor. We had one, but our town burnt down and now it'll be years before we have one again.
You know how we access healthcare? We go to Europe. We go to my wife's country of origin twice a year to visit family and get healthcare. I had a surgery there (wait in Canada was 2 years, in the EU I got it done in 2 days), our son has had all his checkups and most of his vaccines done there.
This social safety net is a myth, a theory. It exists until you actually try to access it.
edit - the only help we received was our insurance company, a private corporation. So what's the difference versus the US apart from our much higher taxes and lower wages?
Your second problem is the responsibility of your provincial government. Your Conservative provincial government.
On one hand, I guess your tragic situation is exactly what I'd expect private home insurance to cover, aside from burglary and other natural disasters, but on the other it's becoming an annual occurrence anywhere west of Calgary, and like many other tragedies, massive holes are being exposed in the artificially scarce and super inflated stock of available housing in any given area; living in a town in a national park is somewhat exceptional on every front, but having literally no backup plan if a whole town disappears is revealing of comically inept levels of government. I know some Lytton residents! are also basically camping, waiting on help from the province that may never come.
That is to say, some parts of our social service systems and economy work—or at least aren't horribly broken—if and only if nothing unexpected happens or we don't grow or shrink population wise or culturally at all. There's basically no margin.
One could say things would be better with more money, but that's just a matter of degree, it's not like GDP going up would automatically prevent displacement or create more doctors, it would just give individuals a bit more leverage potentially when something bad happens. We desperately require better feedback loops tied into the bedrock of our society, better incentives.
Both the US and European models are valid IMO. But in Canada we get the worst of both.
Keep in mind when you google Canadian tax rates, you see the federal rate. The provincial rate is another 10-15% on top, plus sales taxes which can total over 10%.
I know this is true in Alberta (I assume you lived in Jasper?)
Any tips or advice?
You go to border control, tell them you're applying for a TN, hand them a copy of your identification, resume, credentials, and offer letter. Then you wait for a couple of hours while they process you, and you're set for the next few years. Rinse and repeat until your job sponsors you for an H1-B or you marry an American citizen and can apply for a Green Card.
Of course, there's other ways - talk to an immigration lawyer - but that's the simplest.
Going from TN to an immigrant visa via AOS is only risky in the sense that:
- After you've filed your i485 you will no longer be able to get TN status, this applies regardless of your non-immigrant status.
- You can't travel abroad between filing the i485 and receiving AP, which could be 6+ months.
On the plus side you get a Green Card and don't have to play the H1-B lottery.
[0] https://www.boundless.com/immigration-resources/90-day-rule-...
You can get a TN visa cancelled for expressing desire to stay permanently
They are.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-inf...
> You can get a TN visa cancelled for expressing desire to stay permanently
That is not true provided you follow the 90 day rule.
An H1b allows the person to enter the country with the intention of getting a GC and can do so without having to leave the country.
A TN visa is re issued every single time you cross the border and can be denied by a border guard on any amount of misrepresentation
Secondly, your advice about the 90 day rule without context is both bad advice and can get someone's visa cancelled and stuck out of the country.
For future readers. Don't take this advice, ask a lawyer and if you intend to get a GC don't go on a TN unless you want legal complexity.
We agree on one thing however, consult a lawyer (you will have to anyway if you are pursuing a GC). A good lawyer will tell you the same thing.
It's a pathway thousands of Canadians have taken and will continue to take. Don't delay your life over the broken H1-B system.
With that being said for source you can review this site and many others that will say the same thing about intention to permanently reside with a TN visa
https://manifestlaw.com/blog/tn-visa-to-green-card
Lastly your statement of incorrectness also sites no sources so I guess we just both have our opinions at this point
Nothing in that article contradicts anything I have said.
Not a great article either. Very boiler-plate and doesn't mention the 90 day rule for either TN to EB GC or marriage based GC.
> Lastly your statement of incorrectness also sites no sources so I guess we just both have our opinions at this point
Those figures are not public but it's a reasonable statement considering NAFTA has been in place since 1994, over fifty thousand Canadians have been awarded green cards over the last five years[0] and I am one of those people.
[0] - Page 2 - https://travel.state.gov/content/dam/visas/Diversity-Visa/DV...
Being poor or sick sucks here.
For the years that i was living in Ontario there were only 3 MRI machines across the entire province. The waiting period for that diagnostic MRI ranged from anywhere between 10 and 24 months. If doctors were even convinced you were worth getting it.
You could die from something before you could even end up getting properly diagnosed with it.
You might not have competent enough doctors in some countries for specialist treatment if you need it. A popular Canadian Youtuber who lives in Japan (which generally has great medical care) decided to relocate to the United States during the time they were undergoing their particular cancer treatment a couple of years ago. Japanese yakuza bosses pretty famously obtained their illegal organ transplants at UCLA Medical instead of in Japan...
The US's system is certainly flawed but it guarantees that you can obtain the best care possible if you can afford it. That's much better than not being able to get the care even if you can afford it.
Saying "oh that's just first come first serve" is totally missing the fact that the service level can be woefully inadequate.
What's really crazy is that I live in a small city of about 100k people and there are about a dozen hospitals that I can choose from, first-class trauma centers, multiple renowned research centers (affiliated with three different universities). None of that is counting all of the urgent care and other facilities in the area. I have an order of magnitude more options for treatment than I did when living in New York City...
The only way I could open myself up to more/better care options would be to move to Texas.
You get superb care for the rich and mediocre care for the average guy and very little for the rest.
None of this is to defend the US system in particular, which wildly overspends on the outcomes it achieves. But generally, when it comes to managing chronic and acute health conditions, those outcomes are very good.
Jesus. I've got more MRI machines than that within walking distance of my house.
It does seem to have improved significantly, as in 2020 Ontario had 124 (which made it the best provisioned province at the time). When were you there?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/821422/number-of-mri-uni...
CT scans were bad too. Everyone I knew just drove to New York to get diagnostic scan and dental work done at the time.
But even then: Ontario has 15 million people and 124 machines? NYC has 8 million residents and 470 machines.
We could definitely use more and our healthcare system could definitely use serious improvements, but the way it's talked about amongst Americans often seems a little divorced from reality.
From the Economist: https://archive.is/UdixF/ec46ebf7fe812cd5e9432f45f68bd142e6c...
Their housing is more expensive than the US, but taxes are higher and wages are lower.
If Canada’s provinces were states, the populated ones would be poorer than the poorest US states, along with higher taxes and expensive housing.
https://brilliantmaps.com/us-vs-canada-gdp-per-capita/
British Columbia is now poorer than Idaho, again, while being much more expensive. Ontario and Quebec and Canada as a whole are now poorer than West Virginia.
Toronto: $84k CAD ($58k USD)
Montgomery: $55k
The person living in Montgomery can easily afford a house and a middle-class life. Can the person in Toronto?
Would I rather live in Toronto personally? Yes. But on a median salary, no way.
https://www.city-data.com/income/income-Montgomery-Alabama.h...
https://www.toronto.ca/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/9877-City-...
Of course not. But a person living in New York City - making the much higher median household income of 75K USD - also can't afford a house or a middle-class life there. And yet across almost every metric New York is considered a better place to live with higher quality of life than Alabama.
So can you compare cost of living between NYC and Toronto and does the difference in median account for COL difference ?
Would be interesting to hear some first hand experiences from people who lived in both or similarly comparable US/Canadian cities. I was under the impression that Chinese investment in Canadian real estate really destroyed the housign market. I feel like the growing popularity of investing in residential real estate is a global phenomena but some markets are more exposed to some effects than others so it's possible to get some intuition on what impacts it.
Toronto is definitely cheaper than NYC. However Toronto represents a WAYYYY higher percentage of Canadians than NY does.
Rough numbers.
GTA population ~7 million
NYC population ~8.5 million
By representation GTA represents 10x the amount of the country that NYC does.
Major cities being unaffordable in Canada pretty much means Canada is unaffordable.
The same case is not true in the US
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_New_York_City
Edit: actually I take that back the metropolitan NY area seems to encompass a much larger area than the GTA and goes across multiple states.
Which often happens in the US as well. I recall having to wait 3 months to get in to see a gastroenterologist about 10 years ago. People living in rural areas of the US often face this so it's not like it's a problem exclusive to Canada or other countries with universal healthcare.
Can't say for the rest of Canada, but the healthcare is deplorable in Québec.
It is much more accessible, much easier to get about, far less hostile and any loss in wealth is offset by actually being able to enjoy my time more.
- Lower wealth inequality
- Safer, with lower crime rates, especially violent crime
- Higher life expectancy
FWIW, my view of Canada has dimmed considerably. The two things that I felt really set us apart when I left and over those ten years were (and these are intertwined) the stronger Canadian social safety net and the sense that, in general, Canadian culture was kinder, more progressive, smarter, and less racist. But the last few years have really put that to the test. Meanwhile, in my time in the US, I really started to appreciate the aspects of American culture that are lacking up here.
It's been kind of heartbreaking. I was seriously thinking of exploring going back to the US permanently. And then last November happened, and it's too unpalatable at this juncture, once again.
The US is good to anyone who can pay. And my career made it such that I earn a lot more in the US that I would in Canada, so the US has been good to me. It's unclear how widespread that experience actually is. There's a lot of statistics that this is one of the best times to be alive (despite our very cynical / negative attitude about it).
But personally, I have no intent of going back, if only because of the weather.
The strategy clearly worked for him until it didn't.
this isn't meant to be snippy or sarcastic, either. he was genuinely excellent at playing the political game and protecting his own career.
[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-votes-2019-trudeau-b...
[1] https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/people-experience-things-differen...
There’s a good chance Trump will say that he endorses Pierre Pollievre in the coming months causing a number of Canadians to turn their nose at him. This is also a calculated risk.
https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/canadians-want-a-to...
could have been a good time!
The linked article isn't particularly helpful.
Often that happens after a devastating election loss.
In this case it is happening because of his extreme unpopularity before the election and his parties hope of improving their election prospects under a different leader
at least some of the reasons why the US president has a term limit could therefore also apply to other countries prime ministers.
The prime minister is more or less a privileged PM.
He is not the head of the military, cannot create executive orders or anything of the like.
Oh please, you had lots of time to address this and instead you've just handed us to the conservatives.
There is a long history of this not being true, particularly by outgoing leaders. See, for example, how Nixon almost abolished the electoral college.
Yes. Read the history of its support. If Nixon’s SCOTUS pick hadn’t been tanked the amendment would have likely passed.
> If 3/4 of the states were going to pass an amendment then why wouldn't 2/3 call for a convention of the states?
One of these is more drastic than the other.
One candidate for a possible workaround that I've occasionally been speculating about would be an organized process where n groups are tasked with doing n "rewrites" in parallel, and then a process that somehow mixes approval and random selection to pick one. The rationale would be the hope that the low chance of a particular rewrite actually making it would add some distance, would reduce the gaming-the-system incentives. Everybody has some amount of motivation to actually design a fair system, but that's competing with incentive to make it gameable by whatever side the co-author in question is on. But that fairness incentive would not really be diminished much by writing a what-if instead of a definitive future, whereas the incentive to deliberately flaw the would-be system to make it easier to game gets lower with a shrinking likelihood of the proposal actually getting implemented.
The predicted conservative win if the election happens right away, would be a landslide in every sense of that word
RCV encourages moderation, meaning candidates like Peltola and Senator Murkowski (R) win statewide office. This distresses people who feel like such moderates are very far from their own views.
It pisses off people who don’t understand compromise.
But they know they live in a state where any presidential candidate with (R) next to their name can win by 10-20 points. So they wonder how such a state can elect a Democrat without something underhanded going on. A working theory is that the RCV system is "too confusing" for some folks and it leads to the D candidate winning an "undeserved" victory.
Simplicity is an underrated value when it comes to elections. People are more likely to trust that which they can easily understand. And ranked choice, fairly or not tends to cause a lot of confusion.
IRV, though imperfect, is so clearly superior to one candidate voting if the goal is a responsive democracy. Unfortunately, there are many people who don't want that. IRV closes a loophole for extreme candidates (I have a strong suspicion that the 2016 djt campaign would have been thwarted by IRV had the gop primary used it). It also allows partially aligned challengers to pressure incumbents without dividing the electorate. This would likely be better for the challenger and the incumbent. Consider this past election where Jill Stein was demonized as a spoiler, which she potentially was, but would not have been in ranked choice. I bet there are a lot of voters who would have rather voted for Jill Stein but instead cast their vote for a candidate whom they thought could win (including candidates who received what should have been Jill Stein votes and thus lost important information about what matters to their voters). This is bad for everyone except those who don't believe in responsive democracy and largely rewards career politicians, political consultants and lobbyists.
> Trudeau has faced mounting pressure to resign amid polling that showed his ruling Liberal Party was likely to be swept out of power in the next election by the opposition Conservative Party. The prime minister has also become deeply unpopular over a range of issues, including the soaring cost of living and immigration. His leadership as further thrown into question when his finance minister abruptly quit in December.
https://www.newsweek.com/justin-trudeau-resigning-support-co...
This means the conservative party often ends up getting more power since they're "first past the post" even though the majority of the population may not agree with them.
If the situation is as you describe, what really needs to change is that the two left parties need to merge, or one of them needs to become such a marginal player that it doesn't matter. If the leaders of those parties can't or won't do that, well, then you get the situation that you have.
That's not what they're saying. In Canada, we can easily end up with parliamentary majorities for parties that have less than 50% of the popular vote. Sometimes substantially less.
But the complaint seemed to be, not that it kept happening, but that it kept favoring the Conservatives. So, on the one hand, the fact that it keeps favoring one party is an issue. On the other hand, the way the complaint was made makes it sound like it's not coming from a position of objectivity.
Personally, I find it galling that the massive Californian population of Republicans and Texan population of Democrats frequently go unrepresented.
You seem to believe in the primacy of FPTP voting in itself. That’s the difference.
You seem to be reading things into my words that I didn't say.
I get that more representative is good. I get that FPTP isn't that.
But what I said is, when their complaint is that the Conservatives keep winning, that makes their whole argument suspect.
No longer true. Canada now also has the PPC - the People's Part of Canada (see: https://www.peoplespartyofcanada.ca/).
> even though the majority of the population may not agree with them
Well that certainly won't be true for the upcoming election.
Canada uses a first past the post system for federal elections, which usually boils down to a two party state equilibrium
> It would seem weird for a candidate to reform how voting works knowing it could negatively affect their side, right?
Possibly, but I want to believe that politicians can put country over party (I haven't found a huge amount of evidence for this though unfortunately)
To be fair, that two-party equilibrium is the thing that keeps every minor political crisis from causing no-confidence votes and failed governments because all of the special interests involved break the coalition.
Other Parliamentary governments that don't have this kind of equilibrium end up with minor political parties holding massively outsized influence and concessions just to keep them in the coalition. See Denmark (this is pretty much the subject of every season of Borgen).
And the reason for this stability is trivial. If a party leaves a coalition and the coalition loses parliamentary majority, that party is effectively a major party. Potential prime ministers are rarely stupid enough or desperate enough to give small parties that kind of power. Instead, they prefer making the coalition a bit wider by adding another small party or two.
We also have the Swedish People's Party, which specializes as a reliable coalition partner. They are willing to collaborate with pretty much anyone. As long the coalition agrees to uphold the rights of the Swedish-speaking minority, they will give it another 4-5% support without too much drama.
That affords you the social cohesion to avoid these things. Much moreso than Denmark and orders of magntitude moreso than Canada.
You just generally agree with each other more, in your own socially-distant, Finnish way. Kippis!
Also the comments about the Swedish-speaking minority interest are a bit weird in historical context -- Swedish used to be the dominant language in Finland until the Swedish-speaking nobility decided to promote the Finnish language and identity. It isn't exactly weird that their remnants today would be able to promote their own interests...
As for the Swedish-speaking minority, it's mostly a result of colonization in the middle ages. Swedish became the dominant language in some coastal areas, while the rest of present-day Finland spoke a variety of Finnic languages. During both Swedish and Russian rule, Swedish was used as the administrative language, and the elites used it among themselves. But even among the elites, Swedish was often not their native language.
Considering it has pretty much had effectively two primary languages for the past several hundreds years that seems like a stretch? Two of the most famous Finns of all time like Linus Torvalds or Mannerheim didn't even speak Finnish as their first language. Not exactly a sign of "linguistic homogeneity"..
We use preferential voting and haven't had a minority government, that is a government formed by coalition as the result of an election since 2010. We still typically have 2 major parties and 3-4 minor parties that can (but by no means always) hold the balance of power, particularly in the senate. It means that the govt has to compromise more often to get bills passed, but the minority parties rarely hold legislation hostage (barring things like the Housing Future Fund, which was a dog's breakfast).
The argument as to why electoral reform is needed is because of this distortion and the view that the FPTP system itself is resulting in peculiar outcomes that do not reflect the actual wishes of the voting public.
I agree that the conservatives are not a good choice, but apparently for the opposite reason as you - the conservatives are unlikely to be able to fix much of the damage Trudeau has inflicted on the country, especially w.r.t. unfettered immigration.
The PPC is the only one with any sensible policies IMO, but unfortunately they won't be competitive in the upcoming national election.
There was multiple systems being suggested. NDP preferred MMP. Personally I wanted STV, but the Liberal party wanted alternate vote, the system that would benefit them the most.
Once they realized public and other party support was for systems other than Alternative Vote they backed out.
PR would force the Liberals to co-govern in coalition with the NDP basically forever. They don't want it. Their enthusiasm for Ranked Ballots is for the opposite reason: they realize they are the 2nd choice of "most" Canadians (or were until the last few months...). Given that, and the near-extinction event they suffered pre-2015 and the rise of Trudeau II, you can understand why they'd prefer that...
Trudeau wanted electoral reform. But only one kind of electoral reform. A ranked ballot system.
When he couldn't get that, because the NDP and Bloc said "No F'ing Way" (for reasons I'll get into below), he sabotaged the whole committee and forced it shut.
After that he only had minority governments. So there was no way he was going to re-open the issue because he still wouldn't get the result he wanted.
Why ranked ballots, and why are the NDP opposed to them?
Because in a ranked ballot system the Liberals would be the 2nd choice of the majority of Canadians. It would effectively end the NDP as a viable electoral party. At least that's now the NDP saw it. I think a look at other ranked ballot system countries would definitely provide evidence that it tends to produce two-party system outcomes (see Australia, effectively a two party system)
The NDP's preference is for a Mixed Member Proportional system like in Germany. As a partner in a coalition minority gov't with Trudeau there is no way they would have accepted anything else. And key people in the Liberal party will never ever accept such a system, since it would mean governing forever along with the NDP, their ideological opponent (no matter what other people might tell you.)
So, yeah, screw Trudeau, and thank god he's gone (he should have resigned after he failed a majority last time around), but I think people need to dig more on this issue and why he might be saying this:
He wants "electoral reform" and regrets not getting it, because if they had accomplished what they wanted (ranked ballots), they would probably have a good chance at another election win. Yikes.
Overal Picture
Canada has seen gdp-per-capita decline for nearly every quarter over the past 3 years. Large stimulus spending during the pandemic fueled the housing crisis and added massive inflation. Stimulating the economy through similarly massive increases in Non-Permanent Residents has kept GDP afloat, but come at the cost of over-burdening public institutions and housing. Contiuing either policy is not possible and deeply unpopular. Canadians now pay more taxes than any US state, have housing more expensive than New York, but with productivity below that of the poorest state and our dollar running a major discount. This while our public instutions are struggling to meet demand.
1. Recurring themes in Canadian Politics
2. Recent history of the federal liberals
3. Current issues facing the government
Recurring Themes in Canadian Politics
- Unlike the U.S. where there are multiple strong centers of politics and commerce (East Cost, West Coast, Texas), Canada political power is centered largely along the St. Lawrence River where most of the country's population lives.
- Trends arising from this include: Quebec receiving, relative to its population, outsized benefits and influence in exchange for remaining part of the country and as result of French speaking requirements for the federal government. Quebec has nearly exited the country several times
- Canada is still largely a resource-based economy and possess an impressive amount of natural resources: oil, natural gas, largest uranium reserves in the world, more freshwater than all other countries combined, etc.
- The concentration of power in the East while most resource development happening in the West, creates a quasi-colonial between the Ontario/Quebec and the younger and resource heavy provinces, particularly the Prairies.
- Economically, Canada priviledges large incumbent businesses and most of its sectors are oligopolies. The reasoning for doing so historically has been to fend of larger, well funded US competitors.
Recent History of the federal liberals
- Liberals have historically have been centrist party, taking popular ideas from both socialist NDP (who have yet to win a federal election) and the federal Conservative party (itself a coaltion of social and fiscal conservatives created by Harper in the 90s).
- 2015 Justin Trudeau came in as the most popular Prime Minister in history with a majority government. Major legislation included legalizing weed and improvements to Child Benefits. The majority was lost in 2019 with Conservatives gaining the popular vote.
Overall Picture - In Detail
- Economic Issue #1: Lagging economy. Canada is still largely a resource based economy (see above) and business investment in that sector, and Canada overall, declined drastically starting in 2015, arguably due to increasing opportunities for resource development in the U.S. and the Canadian Federal Government stance towards non-reweables. Business investment is more a leading indicator, but still a major economic issue for Canada.
- Economic Issue #2: Increased cost of housing. Canadian housing costs in major cities has reached crisis levels even leading up to the pandemic. Our major cities like Toronto and Vancouver are some of the most unaffordable in the world. Most people who have been in Canada have seen housing in their cities go from achieveable-if-expensive (in major regions) to impossibly unaffordable. Most major cities now require 30+ of saving (at the average income) for a downpayment with a salary in the top 1% to purchase a home.
- Economic issue #3: Large inflation, combined with increased costs from consolidated markets with little competition. Not unlike other countries post-pandemic, but reports show major costs of living such as groceries have seen above-inflation levels of price increases due to industry consolidation. I.E. Many parts of Canada have one 2 major suppliers of grociers
- Immigration Issue #1: Non-permanent Residents. Canada has 2 classes of immigrants (aside from Refugees, whih make up a small number): Permanent Residents (PR's) and Non-permanent residents (NPR's). Our PR system is what is widely hailed as one of the best in the world and a point of Canadian pride. The NPR system has been substantially expanded under the Trudeau government and arguably exploited with millions of NPR's entering as temporary workers and university students. NPR's now consist of over 7% of the population (larger than then Indigenous population).
- Social Cohesion: most of Canada's public services (healthcare, teaching, even postal services, etc) have seen substantial degradation and a struggle to meet capacity.
- Lastly, it should be noted that Canada has tax system well above any US state. Historically, most Canadians have not have a problem with this because of the relative strength of our public institutions.
Current Issues facing the Goverment
- If the federal liberals have an election, they will lost most of their seats. They may even lose party status. They will likely avoid this at all costs.
- The federal NDP are not projected to lose seats, but will lose influence they gain by upholding the minority government. They gain little from a federal election.
- Given an early election is not likely and Trudeau is facing revolts internally (his key finance minister and deputy PM resigned publicly in the past few weeks), the choice is to stop parliment while they look for a new PM (trudeau may act as the interim). If they choose an existing MP for PM (maybe Freeland) they risk being associated with a deeply unpopular party. If they chose an outsider (like Mark Carney), they risk just as much backlash for an unelected PM.
One caveat: as far as I know, taxation in Canada is pretty similar to New York or California.
> stimulus spending during the pandemic fueled the housing crisis
* This sort of double-counts the same phenomenon, but stimulus is largely implemented via interest rate policy. When interest rates fall, people are more willing to pay higher prices for the big-ticket items that will be financed for many years (since the sticker price is offset by lower amortization costs; what people really care about is what their monthly bill will be after all the math is done).
* The pandemic itself directly motivated some demand for housing in smaller centers, as wealthy people got the idea that they could reduce their COVID risk by living somewhere less densely populated. This was also seen in the US e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/15/style/rich-people-fled-ne... . Even if they put up their city residences for sale at the same time, they'd have to find buyers. (Housing, as an asset, is not particularly liquid or fungible. While economists strongly agree that rent controls don't work and the way to solve the problem is to build more housing, it also needs to be housing in places where it actually helps. Which is realistically going to require major zoning reform - the simple existence of millions of square kilometers of undeveloped land isn't really relevant.)
Ultimately, the Canadian democracy has wanted a new prime minister for years and it's abhorrent it has (and is) taking this long to let the citizens vote.
2024 was a banner year for voting against the incumbent governments worldwide. Globally we have a cost-of-living crisis, a housing affordability crisis and a years-long decrease in the standard-of-living. Generally speaking, each country has 3 forces that are in play:
1. Progressives;
2. Neoliberals / centrists; and
3. Outright fascists.
The French election was a prime example of how this plyas out. Macron, a centrist, very much sided with the fascists rather than the progressives, such as who he picked to be Prime Minister after the snap election he called.
Some say the UK is an outlier with Labor winning a massive victory. It is not. The former Labor leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was weakened by a divided electorate so he could be character-assassinated in a coordinated campaign alleging anti-semitism to be replaced by a neoliberal centrist (Keir Starmer). Starmer actually got significantly fewer votes than Corbyn did in his two elections. All that happened was the right-wing vote got split between Conservatives and Reform.
The US election played out similarly. Despite evidence of Biden's cognitive decline being apparent as early as of Spring 2021, he ran for reelection and was supported by the Democratic establishment right up until a disastrous debate performance made clear his position was untenable. Nancy Pelosi reportedly wanted an open primary at the convention. Instead Kamala Harris was anointed as the Democratic establishment feared a progressive candidate would win a primary.
So we got a Wall Street approved centrist neoliberal platform that disrupted nothing and gave absolutely nothing to working people and had a policy platform on many issues (eg the death penalty, Israel-Palestine, immigration, deregulation) with almost no daylight between it and the Trump platform.
Unsurprisingly that platform lost, badly. Predictably.
The point here is that in every election, neoliberals are way more comfortable with (and will side with) fascists than leftists or pgoressives.
Voters, eager for change, will choose populism because they aren't being offered any alternative. But nobody wants to address the root causes here: housing unaffordability and massive wealthy inequality.
Too many people are invested in their house as an investment, as their nest-egg. House prices absolutely have to come down and nobody wants to hear that. Canada is a real estate bubble, just like pretty much every other Western nation.
People will cling to their house prices as society crumbles around them.
You say this like it's a given, but I'm not so sure anymore. The word fascist has lost most of its meaning by being applied to everyone from Donald Trump to J. K. Rowling. Can you explain specifically what you mean by this?
> Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement,[1][2][3] characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy
A good litmus test is to simply see how many parallels you can draw to Nazi Germany. So let's take a few points in relation to Trump:
- "far right": the attack on the bodily autonomy of women, attacks on LGBTQ (particularly T) people, etc
- "authoritarian": Hitler was elected (technically appointed) Chancellor before becoming a dictator. Trump was elected but it really took the Supreme Court to completely invent the idea of presidential immunity to make that happen. There is absolutely no constitutional basis for that decision. This, and various political moves to argue more power should be held by the executive, gets wrapped up in a psuedo-intellectual veneer like "unitary executive theory" [2];
- "ultranationalist": we just had an election campaign of outright race-baiting and villification not seen since 1930s Germany. It will be official government policy to build concentration camps and to use the military to round up undesirables;
- "belief in a antural hierarchy": well, that's just white supremacy.
As another parallel, it's worth noting that many on the right will argue that we need to root out "cultural Marcists" [3], which is eerily similar to Nazi-era "cultural Bolshevism" [4].
Another Nazi-era conspiracy is the Great Replacement [5], which has been resurgent in the last few years (eg [6]).
This isn't unique to the US as you'll see all of these traits in other countries (eg Reform in UK, AfD in Germany, National Rally in France).
Fun fact: one of National Front's founders (Petain) signed the armistice with Nazi Germany in 1940 so collaborated with Hitler as Vichy France [7].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unitary_executive_theory
[3]: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/...
[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Bolshevism
[5]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Replacement_conspiracy_t...
[6]: https://www.npr.org/2023/04/25/1171800317/how-tucker-carlson...
[7]: https://www.france24.com/en/20180220-frances-jean-marie-le-p...
Well then, frankly, given your apparent learning, try encouraging progressives to actually address the root causes, rather than constantly spouting progressive-sounding apologia for them. Not to tell you in another country how your politics works, but I know that in the United States and in some other countries I'm acquainted with, the progressive base in major cities are, if anything, even more attached to their housing nest-eggs than the homeowner/smallholder classes in smaller cities and more conservative states. This preference is visible in the differences of housing policy and rents between, say, California and Texas.
> Canada is a real estate bubble, just like pretty much every other Western nation
Exacerbated by the fact opportunities limited to a few geographic hotspots.
100 million Canadians is not a bad idea once it starts developing other urban centres. But the first 20 million is going to try their hardest to shitup the GTA.
On top of our absurd costs, our productivity is plummeting so there's no positive outlook here.
No need to get conspiratorial.
It wouldn't be the first time in history where one party/group/individual decides to relinquish power anticipating some crisis:
- Sulla was a dictator who retired before the collapse of the Roman republic. - The British handed over power to India before the communal violence escalated. - Nixon resigned to avoid the spectacle of impeachment.
Someone in power may be able to better see some things inevitably coming and bail out sooner to avoid the worse.
You said Trudeau was unpopular for years and yet only now he's leaving.
There's unpopular and then there's unpopular.
His approval rating has dropped off a cliff over the past year. His cabinet ministers have been resigning and/or openly criticizing him / asking for him to step down to save their own political careers.
This article is from last September - 4 months ago.
>> Darrell Bricker, a political scientist and pollster with Ipsos, compared the current moment in Canadian politics to this summer’s historic defeat of the UK Tories, who lost 251 seats in British parliament.
>>“It’s basically over,” said Mr Bricker of Trudeau’s government in an interview with the BBC.
>>“All that is happening is sands sliding out of the sand dial, and we’re working our way towards an inevitable conclusion.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cjrdrnxp74wo
And then this article is from October:
>>Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada faced the stiffest challenge to his leadership from fellow elected Liberal Party members on Wednesday during a closed-door meeting where he was urged to resign to avoid torpedoing the party’s chances in the next election.
>>For more than a year, the Liberals under Mr. Trudeau have trailed the Conservative Party by double digits in polls, suggesting that the Liberal Party could face a crushing defeat in the next election, which must be held by next October.
>>Panic within the party intensified after the Liberals recently lost two special parliamentary elections in districts that had been considered their strongholds.
>>The growing dissatisfaction played out on Wednesday, when most of the 153 Liberal members of Parliament gathered in Ottawa for a scheduled caucus meeting.
>>While caucus proceedings are typically secret, Mr. Trudeau, according to Canadian news media citing unnamed sources, was presented with a letter signed by about two dozen caucus members calling on him to step down.
>>The letter has been circulating for several days, but has been a closely held secret.
>>About 20 Liberal members criticized Mr. Trudeau’s leadership after the letter was read aloud during the three-hour-and-17-minute meeting, according to Canadian news outlets.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/world/canada/trudeau-vote...
Why do you insist that having a 23% approval rating and half of your party begging you to resign isn't a good enough reason?
Seriously, if you're not familiar with the internal politics of another country, why would you make up conspiracies about them?
We agree that there was a good reason for Trudeau to not be in power for a while.
I am just focusing on the timing and history.
https://www.currentmarketvaluation.com/models/s&p500-mean-re...
You might want to rethink a few things.
The hordes of people you have in mind are very malleable and are easily conducted.
One example: https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/tv-anchors-decryi...