[HN Gopher] Justin Trudeau promises to resign as PM
___________________________________________________________________
Justin Trudeau promises to resign as PM
Author : sirteno
Score : 356 points
Date : 2025-01-06 16:07 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cbc.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cbc.ca)
| thesh4d0w wrote:
| > Trudeau, who is now answering questions from reporters, said
| his one regret of his premiership has been his failure to
| introduce electoral reform.
|
| Oh please, you had lots of time to address this and instead
| you've just handed us to the conservatives.
| tgv wrote:
| Electoral reforms are only proposed by those who think they'll
| benefit from them.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Electoral reforms are only proposed by those who think
| they 'll benefit from them_
|
| There is a long history of this not being true, particularly
| by outgoing leaders. See, for example, how Nixon almost
| abolished the electoral college.
| votepaunchy wrote:
| Almost? The proposed amendment that passed the House but
| failed in the Senate? 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?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _proposed amendment that passed the House but failed in
| the Senate_
|
| 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.
| usrusr wrote:
| True. And I believe every system will eventually be gamed to
| some amount. You do occasionally need change. But if you were
| to artificially enforce some "full rewrite" reform e.g. every
| n decades, that reform would just end up a tug of war between
| sides already deep into the existing gaming, trying to
| increase the effect of whatever tactic their side excels in.
|
| 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.
| LanceJones wrote:
| Who is "us"?
| karmasimida wrote:
| Yeah that is a good question to OP
|
| The predicted conservative win if the election happens right
| away, would be a landslide in every sense of that word
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Would it be possible for it to not happen right away? They
| are in a minority government without a PM, I really wonder
| if there's a way the elections aren't triggered basically
| instantly.
| warmlander99 wrote:
| With Trudeau leaving, I suspect that at least one of the
| other parties will give them enough time to elect a new
| leader before bringing down the government. The
| government may even last until the required election date
| of late October however, nothing of any importance will
| likely be passed in that time
| brailsafe wrote:
| He stays on until late march, they need to select a new
| party leader and then an elections held
| warmlander99 wrote:
| Unfortunately, the liberal party rules say they require a
| minimum of four months to elect a new leader. They may be
| able to fast track it in three months, but it's entirely
| up to the liberal party so I suspect Trudeau will still
| be leader when Parliament resumes.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| They will ask the Governor General for a prorogation
| during the leader selection process so Parliament will
| not be resuming any time soon.
| tensor wrote:
| No, it would be a landslide only in one sense, the first
| past the post sense. Not in any other sense. The majority
| of individuals would still not want the cons in power, but
| with FPTP the left vote gets split.
| renewiltord wrote:
| BC perplexingly chose otherwise. People always seem to hate
| this. Even here in California, we're lucky to be able to rank
| everyone in SF but few other cities can. And every election,
| there's a lot of "IRV is ruining this city" when candidates
| with fewer first choice votes win.
| nindalf wrote:
| Alaska got Ranked Choice Voting and after every election
| cycle where a Democrat wins they're up in arms about how it's
| bad. This time the repeal effort got within a whisker of
| succeeding, while the Democrat (Mary Peltola) lost her
| congressional seat.
|
| 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.
| linksnapzz wrote:
| The Duchess of Alaska is a "moderate" only insofar as her
| first and overriding loyalty is to the what the permanent
| Federal Civil Service in DC wants. She'll agree with anyone
| of any ideological stripe so long as she knows the will of
| the bureaucracy is being carried out.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Unlike most states, Alaska is heavily dependent on the
| federal government due to the massive defense footprint
| and ANCSAs.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _This distresses people who feel like such moderates are
| very far from their own views_
|
| It pisses off people who don't understand compromise.
| nindalf wrote:
| They don't want to compromise, agreed.
|
| 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.
| dralley wrote:
| Ranked choice isn't the only alternative voting system that
| encourages moderation. Approval voting is vastly simpler to
| understand and implement and also accomplishes many of the
| same benefits.
|
| 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.
| gs17 wrote:
| Unfortunately, I rarely see people who hate IRV/RCV
| because they want it replaced with approval voting.
| Usually it's that their candidate/party of choice would
| fare worse under it.
| thefaux wrote:
| I hear you and this is such a lazy argument against IRV. Do
| they really lack the imagination to understand why this is a
| feature, not a bug in IRV?
|
| 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.
| jmclnx wrote:
| I hope Canada does not go the "Trump" Route. But from people in
| Canada I know, they think that is distinct possibility.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| The frustrations are certainly similar:
|
| > 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...
| beaned wrote:
| As someone with no knowledge of the topic, why was electrical
| reform needed? Wouldn't one assume that either party motivated
| to do it while in power would be doing it with the goal of
| positively affecting the outcome for their party in the future?
| It would seem weird for a candidate to reform how voting works
| knowing it could negatively affect their side, right?
| thesh4d0w wrote:
| We have two left parties that votes are split across, and a
| single right party.
|
| 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.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| So? "The rules need to be changed because the wrong people
| keep winning" sounds _very_ suspicious to me.
|
| 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.
| dblohm7 wrote:
| > So? "The rules need to be changed because the wrong
| people keep winning" sounds very suspicious to me.
|
| 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.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| No, I got that part. That's true in any first-past-the-
| post system, and especially true in ones with more than
| two major parties. (The solution to that would be
| proportional representation rather than first-past-the-
| post.)
|
| 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.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Some believe that it's better if representative
| democracies represent their constituents. Newer voting
| technology that permits a greater alignment of
| representative distribution with voter distribution is
| preferable to those people.
|
| 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.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > 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.
| renewiltord wrote:
| That seems a misunderstanding of their argument. I
| suggest using an LLM, quoting the comment, and discussing
| with it till your comprehension matches that of the
| machine. They're usually pretty good at it, and it
| appears better than you in this instance.
| jyscao wrote:
| > and a single right party
|
| 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.
| swat535 wrote:
| I beg to differ, the polls say otherwise regarding who the
| population wants and more importantly, the unhealthy
| coalition of NDP / Liberals have been preventing the
| parliament from functioning, we would have had an election
| by now had NDP stopped propping the Liberal party by
| preventing the non confidence vote.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The GOP has used the party in power manipulation to keep
| themselves in power very effectively at the state level with
| gerrymandering.
| Jalad wrote:
| > why was electrical reform needed?
|
| 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)
| busterarm wrote:
| > Canada uses a first past the post system for federal
| elections, which usually boils down to a two party state
| equilibrium
|
| 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).
| jltsiren wrote:
| The only time a Finnish government coalition has failed
| due to a loss of confidence was in the early 80s. Prime
| ministers occasionally change mid-term and minor parties
| sometimes leave the coalition, but the coalition always
| continues until the next regular elections.
|
| 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.
| busterarm wrote:
| Finland is also just about the most ethnically,
| religiously, demographically and linguistically
| homogenous nation you could pick from.
|
| 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...
| jltsiren wrote:
| Your perception of Finland is stuck in the 20th century.
| Today's Finland is roughly 10% immigrants. If the current
| trend continues, the fraction should increase to ~15% by
| 2030. That would be comparable to the US.
|
| 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.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| > Finland is also just about the most ethnically,
| religiously, demographically and linguistically
| homogenous nation you could pick from.
|
| 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"..
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| Australia is a good counter example.
|
| 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).
| mardifoufs wrote:
| It was one of his core promises back in 2015. He almost
| instantly broke it when he got elected, by saying it won't
| happen.
| sdwr wrote:
| In a functional organization, personal interests are balanced
| against ideals, decorum, and the interests of the group.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Canada has a FPTP system but multiple parties. This means
| that it becomes possible to form a distorted, outsized
| government (even a majority government!) with a remarkably
| little amount of the popular vote. In 2019 the Liberals won
| the election and took 46% of the seats with a mere 33% of the
| vote. That is a remarkable distortion.
|
| 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.
| jyscao wrote:
| > instead you've just handed us to the conservatives
|
| 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.
| thijson wrote:
| I remember when he first ran that was one of his planks.
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| Was it failure to introduce ranked voting, or failure to
| introduce electoral reform?
|
| 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.
| joshdavham wrote:
| I wonder if he could still do it last minute. Like could we
| switch to proportional representation in the last months? It'd
| be a better system and may even (cynically) help his own party
| in the next election so there'd be some incentive.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| People are failing to read between the lines here.
|
| 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.
| jyscao wrote:
| Should've done it weeks ago. Utterly shameless.
| busterarm wrote:
| Well, I mean he has a history of just burying his head in the
| sand with every controversy and eventually they all went away
| after a short time.
|
| The strategy clearly worked for him until it didn't.
| jyscao wrote:
| Good point.
| hnthrowaway6543 wrote:
| very true. love him or hate him, Trudeau deserves credit for
| surviving not just sexual assault allegations, but also the
| infamous blackface/brownface pictures[0], all during the
| height of #MeToo and leftist focus on identity politics. he
| wisely identified that the correct response was no response,
| except for notably stating that the sexual assault accuser
| simply "experienced their encounter differently"[1]. a lesser
| politician would have apologized, a tacit admission of guilt,
| and been forced to resign.
|
| 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...
| busterarm wrote:
| Don't leave out the SNC-Lavalin ethics breaches!
| xattt wrote:
| There's some impetus to stay on to bring some stability when
| Trump comes into office. A Shock Doctrine approach (new leader
| at the same time as the US gets one) is going to create an
| environment where a number of regressive policies will get
| pushed through.
|
| 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.
| FredPret wrote:
| More Canadians approve of Trump than of Trudeau
|
| https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/canadians-want-a-
| to...
| xattt wrote:
| Poll is about an individual, not direction of the country.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| was anyone trading this on the prediction markets? only checked
| Polymarket, saw 3, but they didn't look very large
|
| could have been a good time!
| fidotron wrote:
| The one upside here is we should get to see the foreign
| interference report before any new election, but otherwise
| agreed.
| aqme28 wrote:
| I'm out of the loop. What happened weeks ago to spur this?
|
| The linked article isn't particularly helpful.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Well, he's not had the best holiday season, lots of turmoil
| in his cabinet and parliament has been completely stalled.
| morkalork wrote:
| He ordered the finance minister to walk the metaphorical
| plank and she did not acquiesce
| notevenremotely wrote:
| Reckless spending commitments that were challenged by the
| Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland. Favourite to take over I
| might add.
| adverbly wrote:
| Are you kidding? He should have done this way before that...
| Didn't he lose his marriage from this? I feel sorry for the
| guy. It's a tough job...
| ghaering wrote:
| Thank God, that communist experiment ended now. /s
| billfor wrote:
| Yes it's the first time in a long time that a member of the
| Castro family has not run a major government.
| ARandomerDude wrote:
| These days they apparently spell it Castreau.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I suppose the meme is still going around about Pierre
| Trudeau being cucked by a certain foreign leader?
| TMWNN wrote:
| It's not just a meme. Well, the side-by-side comparison
| photos of Justin and Fidel are a meme in the widely
| spread sense. But it is a fact that in April 1971 the
| Trudeaus were a) in the Caribbean for two weeks and b)
| did not publish their schedule, including at least one
| visit to an undisclosed island. Justin was born in
| December 1971.
|
| Add to that c) the remarkably familiar way Fidel, Pierre,
| and Margaret acted toward each other in Fidel's first
| official meeting with them in 1976, and d) Justin's
| remarkably laudatory statement on Fidel's death.
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| Well, then you don't know Canadians.
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| A disturbing number of people will agree and ignore your
| sarcasm.
| newfocogi wrote:
| I hadn't heard that this was likely to happen. Any Canadians here
| able to weigh on whether this was expected or is a normal
| procedure for your elected officials?
| busterarm wrote:
| All the Canadians that I talk to (including some CBC news
| employees) have been insistent that this was an eventuality and
| also that he would drag it out to do it as embarrassingly as
| possible.
| darrylb42 wrote:
| Yes, once they can not lead their party effectively they will
| usually resign. It has been building to this over the last
| month or so.
| brianbest101 wrote:
| Yeah, he pretty much had no choice. Most of his party had given
| him the ultimatum. This has happened a bunch of times outside
| of the Trudeau Harper Chretien eras, it's normal.
| mlekoszek wrote:
| Generally, governments in Canada are voted out in roughly
| 9-year intervals. Trudeau took office in 2015, so nothing
| unusual there. Moreover, Trudeau is exiting with approval
| ratings just a percent below his predecessor, Stephen Harper
| (22% vs. 23%, respectively). So, in a wider sense, this is not
| so unusual. But we're facing a trade war with the States and
| less-than-joking threats of annexation, so it's a bad moment to
| have our leadership in a shakeup.
| redeux wrote:
| I haven't been following the news recently. What is the talk
| of annexation? First I've heard of it.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Trump
|
| 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.
| gpm wrote:
| Taking back the Panama Canal comes to mind.
|
| 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").
| busterarm wrote:
| In fairness, the US paid for the Panama Canal and have
| continued to sustain it despite no "ownership".
|
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| To me, the canal thing is the only thing he's mentioned
| that is possible. There's a stipulation that does allow
| for that, just like there's a stipulation that the crown
| can do away with parliament in the UK. Doesn't mean it's
| an unlikely provision to be invoked without a lot of
| negative baggage to the point they are not likely to
| happen.
| throaway89 wrote:
| Trump is just throwing out every threat he can. There's
| simply no realistic way to unilaterally take Canada, or
| the canal, or Greenland.
| nemo44x wrote:
| Greenland actually makes a lot of sense. I think if every
| citizen there was offered $5million they'd vote yes. And
| it's entirely reasonable from the USA perspective as it's
| not that much overall for the US.
|
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Normal people would try to negotiate trade relations.
| Megalomaniacs would decide to just take something even if
| they try to soften the taking with money.
| mcphage wrote:
| > I think if every citizen there was offered $5million
| they'd vote yes. And it's entirely reasonable from the
| USA perspective as it's not that much overall for the US.
|
| That's almost $300 billion dollars?
| breckenedge wrote:
| A pittance
| mcphage wrote:
| Is it, though?
| dylan604 wrote:
| On top of the suspected tax cuts to boot
| anonymousab wrote:
| More than made up for in 'savings' from killing off
| Medicare. But realistically, you don't really need to
| balance a budget sheet when you can just print more of
| that principle currency on demand.
| mlekoszek wrote:
| There's a good summary here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| Canada%E2%80%93United_States_r...
|
| 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...
| redeux wrote:
| If this is true and Canada has not arrested O'Leary then
| they've already shown how weak they are to naked sedition
| and it's only a matter of time before something terrible
| happens.
| gpm wrote:
| As far as I'm aware we have no laws about going and
| making a moron out of yourself advocating for giving the
| country away. Nor do I particularly think we need any,
| morons can be morons, the rest of us can ignore them (and
| I say this as someone strongly against the idea of
| joining the states).
|
| 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.
| vivekd wrote:
| I don't think there's any need to arrest anyone as a show
| of strength. I don't feel the threat of an actual
| American invasion and I like living in a free society
| that doesn't go around arresting people for political
| show. Most of us are offended by Kevin being a self
| appointed negotiator on behalf of Canada but it's not
| like government is bound by anything he says so if he
| wants to talk in private with Trump as a private citizen
| so be it.
| auxym wrote:
| Since December, Trump has repeatedly "joked" on social
| media about Canada being the 51st US state and Trudeau
| being a "Governor".
|
| The whole thing is pretty stupid, but Trump is so chaotic
| that chances of bad things happening are feeling somewhat
| above zero.
| nashashmi wrote:
| US should take the areas below the 47 degree Lat N. The
| rest can remain Canada. And please Keep Quebec too.
|
| Or maybe Canada should pull a Russia and sell the Northwest
| Territories and Yukon. That would generate a lot of
| interest and money.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > less-than-joking threats of annexation
|
| 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.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Right, but even if the US actually wants to annex Canada,
| Canada would have to allow that to happen. That's what
| makes it insane. Russia wanted to annex Ukraine, and it
| didn't go so well. So playing the tape to the end, what
| do people think Trump is actually proposing? A war? A
| "special operation"?
| NewJazz wrote:
| It didn't go so well because the US and the rest of
| Europe resisted the invasion of Ukraine.
|
| Who will help Canada? They'll be blockaded on day one by
| both land and sea. They won't have any food.
| dylan604 wrote:
| A whole group of countries joined together and came to
| the aid of Kuwait when Iraq attempted to annex them.
|
| 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?
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| And who in their right mind would come to defend Canada
| against the US if it comes to it? It would be suicide on
| any country's part, plain and simple.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Any country or group with a grievance. It would be open
| season. Lots of soft targets in the US that could give
| people pause in their support for Operation Canadian
| Bacon
| throaway89 wrote:
| Who in their right mind would not? If im the leader of a
| European country, and I see the US go rogue and annex
| their closest neighbour and longest ally, thats a clear
| message that the US can not be trusted.
| NewJazz wrote:
| Sure, but in that case you might be more preoccupied with
| securing your own position rather than risking
| intervention on a continent you have no foothold in.
| throaway89 wrote:
| Securing your own position is contingent on having a
| proper deterrence to US invasion or belligerence. Unless
| you are thinking of appeasing them, but I doubt that
| European defense minds would consider that.
| NewJazz wrote:
| You realize most European armies have tons of US
| equipment right? They are barely able to hold back
| Russia, with US help. Now they're supposed to build up
| their domestic DIB, hold off Russia, and fight a war on
| unfamiliar territory?
|
| I doubt they'd adopt outright appeasement, but they would
| be walking very cautiously.
| throaway89 wrote:
| I do realize that. The war in Ukraine is not being
| supported by Nato. They are sending supplies but the
| alliance is not entering Ukraine against Russia so as to
| not create a wider conflict. Note that Ukraine is not a
| NATO signatory while Canada is. In the case of the US
| annexing Canada,the strategic analysis would give two
| options. Either immediately oppose US aggression and form
| a bloc independent of them, or tacitly approve of it and
| leave yourself open to the same thing happening to you
| and your neighbours.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Even more equipment if they force US troops to abandon
| their posts and their equipment as they are all now PNG
| from whatever country we have foreign bases.
| Lio wrote:
| The King of Canada would probably want to defend his
| people regardless of the cost.
|
| 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.
| Wytwwww wrote:
| Well... if we're living in a imaginary/video game world
| where US invades Canada it wouldn't be too far fetched to
| expect Britain and France to intervene? I mean which is
| more absurd?
| dylan604 wrote:
| At that point, Mexico could run up the middle and take
| back what was taken from it. That would be chef's kiss
| response to Trump
| NewJazz wrote:
| Kuwait is nowhere near comparable. Btw that coalition of
| countries... Who led it?
| dylan604 wrote:
| If the rest of the world refused to trade with the US
| over this, the US would have a helluva time and struggle.
| No bullets need to be expended.
|
| Why is this hard to comprehend?
| NewJazz wrote:
| Russia is an even smaller economy than the US, and even
| then many countries continue to trade with them despite
| their aggression.
|
| 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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| If the US were in this position, any country that had
| sanctions that were only there at the urging from the US
| would be dropped. Even if they were not dropped, those
| that were sanctioned would immediately start ignoring
| them. Hell, most of Europe would probably immediately
| starting buying oil/gas from Russia.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I dont think there would be a military intervention, and
| if there were, I dont think it would be verry successful.
| NATO would be crippled without the US.
|
| That said, of course it isnt worth it for the US.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| They could invoke Article 5 of NATO; that would trigger
| Article 8;, expelling USA from NATO and requiring all
| remaining member to come to Canada's aid.
|
| >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.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > expelling USA from NATO
|
| which would suit Trump just fine. this isn't a dissuading
| argument to Trump, and would probably be considered as
| bonus to his lot.
| polishdude20 wrote:
| Would anyone really want to oppose America though?
| NewJazz wrote:
| Words on a page don't put boots on the ground. The treaty
| would be invoked, US would be expelled (and sanctioned),
| and nobody would dare try to break the blockade.
|
| 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).
| mlekoszek wrote:
| Even if they achieve it, the reputational damage would be
| hard to understate. I think anyone with a bone to pick
| with the States would happily and repeatedly point to us
| Canadians as an example of what happens when you trust
| Americans. And that would be enough to achieve a lot of
| their regional policy goals, if not much more. Mexico
| would probably seek other political partners to make sure
| they're not next.
| throaway89 wrote:
| Yes, an American invasion of Canada would immeidately set
| the stage for a worldwide rationale for opposing US
| interests.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Which wouldn't matter much because Canada and Europe rely
| on US military, equipment, and IT and the US is an ocean
| away.
| dylan604 wrote:
| The US imports most of its oil while exporting the oil it
| produces. Ooops.
|
| 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?
| NewJazz wrote:
| These are good points, but I have to comment that all of
| these suggest the physical resistance to an annexation
| would come from _domestic_ actors rather than
| international.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Let me be clear, there are 1,001 reasons why annexing
| Canada would be a bad idea. I'm just saying that military
| impossibility is not one of them.
|
| It is a fun fictional exercise, ala _Man in the
| Highcastle_
| dylan604 wrote:
| I think it would be closer to Handmaid's Tale than
| Highcastle since it's a modern day than a twist WWII
| ending
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| fun and interesting either way. I hear netflix potential
| glitchc wrote:
| The President is technically the commander-in-chief of the
| armed forces in the US. His opinion carries weight,
| fortunately or unfortunately.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I like the use of technically here leaving the hint that
| some might not go along with those orders even if the
| technical commander did give them. This is more chilling
| with Kelly's revelations of Trump's desire to have a
| specific type of general
| glitchc wrote:
| That's because I believe Congress still needs to approve
| before the US can go to war.
| dylan604 wrote:
| You mean both chambers that are now in control by his
| party?
|
| 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_U
| nit...
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| ...unless they decide to just have Pentagon lawyers print
| up a lot of paper that says whatever they're doing falls
| under existing authorizations that consistently get
| renewed without debate.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Maybe they can go on a hunt for WMDs in the great white
| north???
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| There is no reason to annex Canada when it's economy can
| simply be bought and controlled.
|
| Eg: Nexen was bought by CNOOC with a whole bunch of
| promises and broke lots of them.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CNOOC_Petroleum_North_America
| aaron_m04 wrote:
| Annexation is not a joke?
| krashidov wrote:
| > and less-than-joking threats of annexation
|
| 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.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Not being a part of the states is our national identity.
| It's just very fringe minority who dabbles with the idea of
| joining the USA.
| mlekoszek wrote:
| I think the Overton window has become much easier to
| slide around with social media influence campaigns. If
| someone powerful wants something -- even if it's against
| everyone else's interests -- it's now much easier for
| them to drum up popular support for it through
| underhanded tactics. Remember that Brexit started as a
| joke.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Everyone gets manipulated one way or another. It's up to
| the person to carry the weight and responsibility of
| their actions.
|
| 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.
| throaway89 wrote:
| This is my analysis too. Trump is all about brinkmanship.
| Scare everyone else and bring them to the edge of the
| precipice that you know they dont want to go over. Then
| extract concessions. Its desperation, not sustainable,
| but it works as long as you have the upper hand.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Agreed, it definitely works. But given the absolute
| numbers of population in other countries, I'm not sure
| how long it can last. Alienate the allies, make them get
| together, and join the competitor, as you're being very
| unreliable.
| throaway89 wrote:
| Thats the question. How much does Trump actually
| understand the context and how far will he go?
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| I think he understands quite a bit. People on his team
| are very far from being stupid. They're all playing the
| "populist game in the streets" to garner support, but it
| doesn't seem like they have a strategy laid out to
| confront the upcoming problems.
| SpecialistK wrote:
| "Remember that Brexit started as a joke."
|
| 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.
| mlekoszek wrote:
| That's a great point; I'm glad you added that context and
| I'll take back that characterisation. I was mostly
| speaking through the lens of Farage's antics, and lacked
| the viewpoint of someone from the UK proper.
| throaway89 wrote:
| Brexit wasnt a joke, it was the culmination of decades of
| anti-EU sentiment in the UK.
| BunsanSpace wrote:
| This is the crux of the issue honestly. Trudeau should have
| had the humility to read the writing on the wall in the fall,
| and stepped down so we could have a stable government to deal
| with the incoming US administration and give his party a
| fighting chance next election.
|
| 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.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Neither Freeland nor Carney want to be the next Kim
| Campbell. The Liberals are going to lose the next election
| badly whether or not Trudeau is leading it. I'm sure that
| Trudeau made the decision to step down ~6 months ago and is
| now just playing with the timing to maximum effect.
| Stepping down now basically pushes the election three
| months further out than it would otherwise be due to a
| prorogation to pick a new leader. That gives Pollievre 3
| more months worth of rope and Trump time to sabotage
| Pollievre.
| ygjb wrote:
| Here's the primary problem with your argument: the current
| front-runner to win the next election is the Conservative
| Party of Canada, with Pierre Poilievre as leader, and
| pretty much a shoo-in for the next Prime Minister.
|
| 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)
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > Trudeau's greatest mistake was not implementing the
| electoral change he campaigned on
|
| 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.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| I voted Liberal in 2015. Because of that betrayal, I
| never have since or will in future.
| tlss wrote:
| Justin Trudeau was a ski instructor before becoming Prime
| Minister.
|
| 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.
| ygjb wrote:
| Sure, Trudeau was a ski instructor. You will also note
| that I neglected to mention that Poilievre had a paper
| route; that's because paper routes aren't professional
| experience.
|
| 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.
| maxglute wrote:
| >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.
| throaway89 wrote:
| shoo-in*
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| Its been expected since before the Christmas break. There was a
| cabinet reshuffle, and its come out he's lost the support of
| his finance minister Chrystia Freeland, wasn't able to replace
| her with Marc Carney his top choice as Carney seems to be
| distancing himself from the current Govt on top of public
| support being at an all time low.
|
| 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.
| BenoitEssiambre wrote:
| Yup, I hear the top candidates to replace him are Chrystia
| Freeland or Marc Carney (maybe known to this community since
| he's on Stripe's board). These top candidates might not
| accept to play this round though as the chances of winning
| are slim in the current circumstances. Some people are
| calling the next leader of the party a "sacrificial lamb".
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| Its very possible the next candidate inherits the overall
| sentiment and is indeed a 'sacrificial lamb'. The anti-
| Trudeau sentiment is high, but if he steps back its an open
| question if the left wing/ABC crowd and centrists revisit
| their support for the liberal party.
|
| 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.
| acc_297 wrote:
| Yes and yes.
|
| 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
| dralley wrote:
| "Canadian federal governments tend to last 6 months, or 10
| years. After 10 years the roof falls in"
| gpm wrote:
| > There will likely be an election in 3ish months
|
| 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).
| gspencley wrote:
| Canadian here. It's certainly not normal. News broke yesterday
| that this was coming. The opposition kept tabling no confidence
| votes and trying to get an early election called... and
| Trudeau's approval rating is so low that it might even be the
| lowest of any Prime Minister in history (though I don't know so
| if someone does by all means fact check that).
|
| 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).
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| What does "prorogued" do here? Does it prevent a no-
| confidence vote? And, what would a no-confidence vote do?
| gspencley wrote:
| It means it is suspended.
|
| (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).
| fidotron wrote:
| Prorogued means parliament will not meet, and so cannot
| hold any votes. Right now it is purely being used to
| prevent such a vote since there is a majority in parliament
| that would now vote against the government in such a
| situation, which in turn provokes an election.
|
| 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.
| wmoxam wrote:
| Tying NDP support to their leader's pension is
| silly/lazy.
|
| 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
| fidotron wrote:
| > Tying NDP support to their leader's pension is
| silly/lazy.
|
| 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.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| 1% below Stephen Harper, which is bad, but not unprecedented
| bad.
|
| 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).
| 3vidence wrote:
| The approval rating seems like an unhelpful metric here if
| the actual resulting election is such a landslide.
|
| 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.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > they will win in a land slide is that people HATE
| Trudeau in a way I haven't seen in my life.
|
| Harper was widely hated.
| vivekd wrote:
| This was definitely expected, people within and outside of the
| party have been calling for Trudeau to resign for a while and
| that chorus has been getting louder and picking up more
| prominent figures.
|
| 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
| fidotron wrote:
| Looking at Canadian polls might indicate some things:
| https://338canada.com/districts.htm
|
| 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.
| lesam wrote:
| The NDP party does not want a Conservative landslide
| government either, regardless of Mr. Singh's pension.
| macspoofing wrote:
| Yes. It's pretty normal in the Westminster system and more
| generally in Parliamentary systems.
|
| 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.
| 99_00 wrote:
| It's expected and it is normal.
|
| 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.
| quantisan wrote:
| As others have said, this came after historically significant
| low popularity and mounting political pressures. His government
| faced criticism over falling poll numbers, by-election losses,
| and a broken agreement with the NDP. Tensions with the US and
| internal dissent within the Liberal party added to his
| challenges.
|
| 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
| boringg wrote:
| Highly expected - he was trying to put it off to get to the
| convention without having to trigger an election.
| dblohm7 wrote:
| This is good news. His government has been dysfunctional for some
| time now. It's unfortunate that he held on for so long, as we
| needed a government ready to deal with Trump yesterday.
| dennis_jeeves2 wrote:
| >been dysfunctional for some time now
|
| It was always dysfunctional. It's just that it wasn't noticed
| early on.
| pluc wrote:
| Here come the conservatives, again. Canada might not be a two-
| party system, but you'd never guess looking at the last hundred
| years.
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| Problem with First Past the Post voting systems, we tend to
| vote "strategically", and since the Alliance and PC's joined
| early augh's, the Right has been "unified" while the left is
| still split between the more centrist liberals and left NDP,
| with a small portion bled off for green's.
|
| Would love to see explanations of downvotes since this is
| factually true...
| FredPret wrote:
| First past the post is awesome.
|
| 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.
| Ekaros wrote:
| You can have both. Selected the candidate and proportional
| presentation. Most popular party candidates get elected.
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| Multiple proportional systems don't require lists and
| provide the best outcome.
|
| 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.
| FredPret wrote:
| "Someone disagrees with me" = "they're rejecting reality"
|
| Do you realize how alienating this shit is to a centrist?
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| I am a centrist. There have been a ton of studies on
| various sides of the spectrum highlighting issues with
| FPTP as a system.
|
| 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"
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| > Its not really open for debate these days although
| people love to reject reality.
|
| 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.
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| Gravity's existence isn't open for debate, that doesn't
| mean there isn't more to learn about it.
|
| 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.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _Gravity 's existence isn't open for debate_
|
| 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.
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| Gravity isn't understood, but it exists as a force
| regardless. We know it does, no one debates it does, but
| whatever we _call_ it might change, and how we understand
| it will inevitably change.
|
| 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.
| freedomben wrote:
| Ah fair, I do see your point on a difference between
| existence and understanding. Though, some of the theories
| I've heard basically posit that gravity doesn't really
| "exist" in any sense that we have of it now, but is
| rather just an exposed slice of some higher dimensional
| reality that we can't experience entirely. But, to your
| point, _something_ obviously _exists_ there because it 's
| measurable, repeatable, etc, so from that perspective
| nobody is questioning it's existence.
|
| 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!
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| One of the outcomes of the 2015 election was that we had
| an electoral reform committee that evaluated various
| electoral systems to see what best fixed Canada's
| problems. 88% of the experts that spoke to committee said
| that Proportional Representation was the best system for
| a country like Canada.
|
| 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.
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| FPTP has many many flaws, one being that it trends towards
| a defacto 2-party system due to strategic voting,
| especially if only one spectrum is divided (i.e.
| liberal/ndp, or alliance/progressive conservatives back a
| few decades ago).
|
| 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.
| FredPret wrote:
| What's wrong with two parties?
|
| Countries with multiple small parties frequently seem to
| collapse into political torpor where nothing ever
| changes.
| NewJazz wrote:
| Countries with two parties often collapse into inaction
| where nothing ever changes too.
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| There is no way 2 parties can represent the diversity of
| opinions and ideas in the country.
|
| 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.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Ranked/alternate voting and STV shouldn't be lumped into
| the same bucket.
|
| 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.
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| Alterate ranked voting somewhat addresses the idea of
| needing to strategically vote (favorite betrayal) in
| favour of your ideal candidate, but only to a degree
| depending on the parties and initial polling support (a
| runaway party you don't like will still lead to
| strategically voting for the party most likely to beat
| them). Its proportional in that the winners have to get
| at the most amount of votes across the ranks after
| eliminations, i.e. you can't win if no one picks you as
| second/third option, so you have to be picked by someone
| therefore you are considered to be representing them.
|
| STV does a much better job of it and is why I was
| strongly in support of STV over AR/MMP or other options.
| I-M-S wrote:
| I moved from a PR country to a FPTP one (Canada) and my
| experience is exactly the opposite - as a left-leaning
| individual in a conservative ward, there's no way for my
| vote to ever count. But yeah, now my interests are directly
| ignored by a dude with a newsletter, an email address, and
| an office.
| FredPret wrote:
| The idea is that you would now engage with your dude and
| your fellow citizens in that conservative riding and be a
| moderating influence.
|
| You are all in the same boat in a sense that's more local
| and less abstract than with proportional rep.
| hmmm-i-wonder wrote:
| Considering its a safe conservative riding, that
| engagement is ignored and goes no where. Politicians here
| are the same as anywhere else, they will focus on where
| the money and the votes come from and ignore the rest.
|
| Which is why voting needs to be effective, and FPTP is
| exactly why there are so many "safe" ridings for the
| various parties.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| We did it to ourselves. Modern "small L" liberalism went
| completely overboard, and we're seeing that play out now in the
| rise of fascist leaning governments in the west. It will take a
| generation for the pendulum to swing back.
| joshdavham wrote:
| > Canada might not be a two-party system
|
| I prefer the term: two-party state
| fullshark wrote:
| That link says he's going to stay on as PM? In the video he says
| he "intends to resign."
| MattGaiser wrote:
| He is going to stay until a new leader is chosen by the Liberal
| Party of Canada.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Why not hand over power immediately to the next person in
| line? Doesn't preclude the party choosing someone else when
| they get around to it.
| sharkbot wrote:
| There is no formal "next in line". The closest potential
| successor would have been the deputy prime minister;
| Chrystia Freeland held that role until a few weeks ago when
| she dramatically resigned and sparked this chain of events.
|
| Currently, this is "Working as Intended" in Canada's
| political system.
| joshlemer wrote:
| Usually what happens when a party is not in power is that
| the leader will resign and an interim leader will be
| appointed until a new leader is elected through a
| leadership election. When a party is in power however, that
| interim leader would be an "interim Prime Minister" and is
| avoided because it's a lot of responsibility to give to an
| interim with no mandate from voters or the party.
| dylan604 wrote:
| One comment does not negate the other. It is traditional in
| most jobs to give notice before resigning. In government, it
| typically is the same unless for resignations. Being forcefully
| removed is closer to being fired/sacked with termination being
| much more suddenly
| Leherenn wrote:
| And even when they're forcibly removed (e.g. via a vote of
| no-confidence), they often keep on doing the job until a
| replacement is found, albeit with limited scope/powers. See
| France for instance recently.
| vivekd wrote:
| Canada has a parliamentary system where the leader of the party
| with the most votes becomes prime Minister. So Trudeau can step
| down as leader of his party while remaining Prime Minister.
|
| In this case he intends to stay on until his party selects a
| new Prime Minister
| zawaideh wrote:
| Technically the leader of the party with most seats gets
| first shot at forming government. If it is a minority
| parliament, another party could get a shot at forming
| government if the first place one fails.
| casenmgreen wrote:
| Best of luck to our Canadian friends.
| grecy wrote:
| Based on polls, we're headed for exactly the same kind of
| leader as our southern neighbour, and it scares the shit outta
| me.
| joshdavham wrote:
| What makes you think that? They don't seem very similar to me
| aside from sharing the broad label of 'conservative'.
| I-M-S wrote:
| And love of simplistic slogans. Whether there's more
| substance to Pierre Poilievre than to Donald Trump remains
| to be seen.
| daseiner1 wrote:
| Simplistic slogans win popular elections. So, prudent
| strategy at least.
| WorkerBee28474 wrote:
| Because Liberals pretend that anyone they don't like is a
| mini-Trump to try to scare people into voting Liberal.
| ozmodiar wrote:
| To try to expand on this in a constructive way, I think the
| similarities are that they both pretend to be outsiders
| while being very connected and powerful and have a worrying
| amount of disrespectful and vindictive rhetoric and a
| refusal to engage with the media/intentionally egging on of
| rage towards the media. That's kind of where it ends
| though, since I don't think Poilievre has Trump's trademark
| complete lack of self awareness (I'm not trying to be
| insulting here, I think it gets him pretty far honestly and
| has lead to some of his funnier tweets, though I'm not a
| fan.).
|
| Poilievre seems more like a traditional politician trying
| to ride the populist right wing train, and he's far less
| charismatic than Trump. Conservatives I know aren't crazy
| about him, if he weren't up against the even more unpopular
| Trudeau during the post covid global incumbent purge going
| on I don't think the election would be nearly as favorable.
| I am worried, but mostly due to the general state of the
| world.
|
| Also Canada gets most of its media from the states, so
| right wing Canadians talk like right wing Americans with
| most of the same talking points. I think they'll always
| look similar and I can't necessarily blame Poilievre for
| that even if it does annoy me and he definitely
| intentionally rides it. It's certainly not going to end
| with him, and the Libs also like to pretend to be Democrats
| when it suits them.
| relaxing wrote:
| lol who downvoted this
| somedude895 wrote:
| It's a low effort comment that doesn't add anything of value.
| casenmgreen wrote:
| I mean, yes, it doesn't say much.
|
| But it is perhaps nice to read a simple sentiment, wishing
| well.
|
| I wasn't posting for upvotes, just expressing a feeling.
| csense wrote:
| Patio11 has some good coverage of Trudeau's handling of the
| trucker protest against the government's handling of COVID-19
| [1].
|
| 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.)
| Cumpiler69 wrote:
| _> 'The intent was not to get at the families', and when a
| democratic government starts a sentence that way something
| deeply #&$#ed up has happened."_
|
| Wait, are people that shocked that their democratic governments
| are wiling to act like mobsters/dictators against a minority
| group just to get their way and appease a majority, when the
| history books are full of such examples? People must have a
| short memory then and why history repeating itself is a fact.
| busterarm wrote:
| While I agree with patio11's assessment here, if you were to
| poll the average Ottawan about the trucker protest, you'll
| largely get back a response of "#&$! those people", soley
| because they were minorly-inconvenienced by them.
|
| Canadian politics (not uniquely here) is plagued with petty
| squabbles. The really meaningful political and social issues
| don't get any airtime.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _if you were to poll the average Ottawan about the trucker
| protest, you 'll largely get back a response of "#&$! those
| people", soley because they were minorly-inconvenienced by
| them_
|
| 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.
| ivell wrote:
| Switzerland has direct democracy and seems to go fine with
| it.
| sapphicsnail wrote:
| I can't imagine looking at Republican Rome or any of the
| tyrants in the ancient world and thinking they're better.
|
| 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.
| throw10920 wrote:
| Is this where the meme about Canadians being very polite
| comes from - a tendency towards pettiness rather than really
| nasty political rifts? (I don't know anything about Canadian
| culture)
| busterarm wrote:
| Spend 5 minutes in Toronto Union Station during commuter
| hours and you'll never describe Canadians as polite again.
| FredPret wrote:
| That's the very worst point of view you'll ever get of
| Canadians. Of course people in a busy train station
| during rush hour aren't in the best mood.
|
| Travel the country up and down, big cities and small
| towns, and I guarantee you will conclude that Canadians
| are the best people around.
| busterarm wrote:
| Yes and no.
|
| 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.
| FredPret wrote:
| Daily traffic at Union is 300k according to a quick
| google.
|
| 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.
| busterarm wrote:
| And yet if you go there at commuter times and spend 5
| minutes just observing, I'm sure you'll feel the same
| way.
|
| 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.
| FredPret wrote:
| I spent years commuting via that very station, and others
| like it in cities elsewhere in the world.
|
| It's just a whole bunch of stressed people in a hurry.
| blankx32 wrote:
| They are also not all Canadian in the station
| dgfitz wrote:
| French Canadians are not a welcoming people.
| busterarm wrote:
| I had some of my best times in Quebec (City). I felt
| super welcome despite only speaking English.
|
| 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 Quebecois
| 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.
| chikenf00t wrote:
| As a French Canadian this is unfortunately true the
| further north you go.
| dgfitz wrote:
| Fwiw, I'm not trying to knock you, it was just my
| experience.
| greenavocado wrote:
| There are still Canadians in Canada?
| lofenfew wrote:
| ethnic canadians are still about 5% of the population, if
| you can believe it.
| legitster wrote:
| > soley because they were minorly-inconvenienced by them
|
| 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.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > minorly-inconvenienced
|
| 120dB train horns at 2AM in the morning in a residential area
| is not a minor inconvenience.
| loceng wrote:
| That stopped after the judge gave an injunction. That judge
| also said the protest could otherwise continue as was a
| Charter right.
| VancouverMan wrote:
| > a residential area
|
| 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.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| I know several people who live in those "non-residential"
| areas you describe.
|
| For example, https://www.google.com/maps/place/9+Rideau+S
| t,+Ottawa,+ON+K1... is a condo building.
| robocat wrote:
| Singular counter-examples are meaningless in reference to
| the category "residential".
| akdev1l wrote:
| > It's not "a residential area" in any sense.
|
| 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.
| robocat wrote:
| I'll play: we can find 1m2 of road in the residential
| area that is obviously not residential. Now we have two
| counterexamples that conflict. Logically the premise is
| meaningless.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _Have you ever actually been to downtown Ottawa, where
| those protests were held?_
|
| > _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.
| busterarm wrote:
| Both of these links state pretty clearly that she lives
| in London. In the UK.
|
| 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.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| This seems a bit confused.
|
| 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.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Why would it matter when the judiciary is not a co-equal
| branch of government?_
|
| Then there is an external guarantor of the rights of the
| people against the government.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Huh? What 'external guarantor'?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _What 'external guarantor'?_
|
| ...the coequal judiciary.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| How can a subordinate entity be external?
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| A subordinate judiciary isn't coequal.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| I know it's not coequal, because I was the one who wrote
| this...
| darth_avocado wrote:
| You mean the same external guarantor of the rights who gets
| picked by the same government?
| mass_and_energy wrote:
| YSK that the people who had their accounts frozen weren't
| simply protesting in Ottawa; they were blocking international
| borders to our largest trading partner, effectively holding our
| economy hostage. This absolutely constitutes behavior that's a
| danger to our nation so it makes sense to freeze the accounts
| of the people doing it. To be clear, there were many attempts
| to settle this without freezing people's bank accounts, but
| when nothing else works sometimes you have to get out the big
| guns.
| Cumpiler69 wrote:
| _> but when nothing else works sometimes you have to get out
| the big guns._
|
| 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.
| leptons wrote:
| Police refused to do their jobs. Army can't be used against
| citizens. The truckers were warned what would happen, and
| they made their families pay the price. They could have
| ended their ridiculous occupation, which wasn't even
| necessary. This occupation was held because of covid
| restrictions _in 2022_ - after much of the world had
| already returned to normal. This was a protest based on
| ignorance, not well founded principles. The truckers fucked
| around and found out
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| > The truckers were warned what would happen, and they
| made their families pay the price.
|
| This is a terrifying comment and you should really start
| re-examining your outlook on life. I really hope you are
| nowhere near any sort of lever of power.
| leptons wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with what I said, you're being
| overly dramatic. You really find an internet comment
| "terrifying"? Realy??
|
| What _should_ terrify you is police refusing to do their
| jobs.
|
| You can't occupy a city and refuse to leave without
| consequences. Unfortunately the consequences are what
| they are for these misguided truckers. They should have
| had their trucks impounded permanently, because they
| proved that they can't be trusted not to hold a country
| hostage with them. This was a terrorist situation, the
| truckers were terrorizing citizens, and preventing
| emergency vehicles, and commerce. The truckers absolutely
| caused chaos, and so they have chaos coming to their
| lives too as a result. And yes, I have plenty of power,
| _all the power I need_ - and I 'm not even sure why you
| attack me this way. Apparently Trudeau had power and used
| it to rightfully punish terrorists.
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| Yes. I find it terrifying that people like you exist.
|
| You are openly championing and celebrating elsewhere in
| this thread, the Canadian government _going after the
| families_ of the people _you say_ are terrorists because
| the Canadian government was unable to address the actual
| issue at hand?
|
| Do you not hear yourself?
| bawolff wrote:
| > 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.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Or the ones in Coutts with guns and a pipe bomb.
| catgary wrote:
| Yeah are we forgetting Alberta truckers who were planning
| to murder RCMP officers, and were straight-up terrorists?
| gadders wrote:
| The thing they were found not guilty of?
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/anthony-olienick-
| chri...
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| > But Anthony Olienick and Chris Carbert were both
| convicted on other charges of mischief and possession of
| a weapon for a dangerous purpose. Olienick was also
| convicted of possessing a pipe bomb.
|
| > "It was an overcharge to begin with," Beyak said.
|
| > He said if police tried to storm the barricade, he
| would "slit their throats."
| gadders wrote:
| So a few of them had guns then?
| potato3732842 wrote:
| They won't tell you this because the patchwork of
| regulations makes it literally impossible to do so
| legally but a very large minority, perhaps brushing up to
| scant majority depending on where you measure, of
| truckers in North America pack heat. They're in and out
| of all sorts of sketchy places all the time, never have
| local knowledge and would be insanely easy pickings for
| various types of career criminals if they (as a class of
| people) were not a risky target.
| freedomben wrote:
| Can't speak for Canada, but this is definitely true in
| the US. I have no data other than my girlfriends dad (who
| I spent a lot of time with) was a trucker who refused to
| carry (and was a big fan of Michael Moore and Fahrenheit
| 9/11, mentioned so you know his bias) who got into a lot
| of debates with his coworkers about it. In the western US
| where the gun laws are more friendly, "damn near
| everyone" kept at least a pistol. At one point he
| actually started carrying as well after getting (wrongly,
| he claims :-D) roughed up by a pimp at a remote truck
| stop.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Fortunate for him, he benefit from all his coworkers
| having a pu lic reputation for packing heat even though
| he didn't approve of it himself. The criminals who might
| otherwise try to take advantage of him wouldn't know that
| he was unarmed, but would be wary of truckers in general.
| bragr wrote:
| I don't know about the details of this prosecution, but
| having served on juries, it is important to remember than
| "not guilty" is a finding that the government didn't meet
| the burden of proof, not necessarily a finding of actual
| innocence. That article would certainly suggest that they
| were prepared for violence, even if acquitted on the most
| serious charge.
| null0pointer wrote:
| It certainly is a finding of innocence when the
| presumption is innocent until proven guilty.
| eastbound wrote:
| > effectively holding our economy hostage
|
| 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?
| lamontcg wrote:
| I mean, the South in the US waged a really big protest
| because they wanted slaves, and we murdered each other
| enough that they sort of changed their mind. Not every
| political grievance is on the right side of history.
| B1FF_PSUVM wrote:
| > the right side of history.
|
| A particularly odious moral framework, mostly used to
| justify mass murder.
| tlss wrote:
| Everyone thinks they're on the right side of history :)
| lamontcg wrote:
| I guess it's time for slavery again, then.
| alext5 wrote:
| Please, disagreeing on a topic and providing arguments is
| one thing, but suggesting somebody go live in another
| country because you don't agree with them on something that
| happened in their country is disrespectful.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _This is what a protest is._
|
| 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_ SS132).
|
| 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.
| adamc wrote:
| Not a Canadian, but no, a protest _protests_ and gives
| voice to the disagreement. Blocking other people 's rights
| is not just a protest and is likely to trigger action to
| protect others. That's how it goes everywhere that has
| rights. Normally, some effort is made to do it peacefully,
| but there are no countries where you can halt the economy
| whenever you want to force people to negotiate with you.
| tlss wrote:
| I mean, this is the French way. SNCF striking (a yearly
| occurrence) is arguably halting the economy each time it
| happens.
|
| 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.
| bawolff wrote:
| I think a better comparison would be the jan 6 protests
| in usa in 2021.
| throaway89 wrote:
| A protest which isn't allowed to do anything other than
| raise voices is a powerless and toothless protest.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Speaking as someone who has been in dozens of protests in
| my life: yes, that is what protest is, and as a protester
| engaging in civil disobedience you _expect_ the response
| from authorities. That is exactly the point. When I have
| been on the receiving end of tear gas, there was no
| surprise. Big duh.
|
| 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.
| ungreased0675 wrote:
| That logic seems like it would outlaw labor strikes too,
| especially in important industries. Sometimes, holding the
| economy hostage is the point.
|
| 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.
| segasaturn wrote:
| The recent postal strikes in Canada are an example of the
| situation you're describing. Eventually the federal
| government had to step in and break the strike to get the
| mail system moving again - if the workers refused to
| comply, against the orders of the government, I actually
| think strong measures like the freezing of bank accounts
| would be warranted and supported by most Canadians.
| gruez wrote:
| >I actually think strong measures like the freezing of
| bank accounts would be warranted and supported by most
| Canadians.
|
| Typically such measures are mandated by court order, not
| executive fiat.
| ungreased0675 wrote:
| The government should be able to force people to work
| under worse conditions and less pay they want to? That's
| ok if most Canadians support it? Really? I hope you can
| appreciate just how dangerous this sounds, even if you
| think my slippery slope has a lot of traction on it.
| roncesvalles wrote:
| Except it wasn't a labour strike.
| gruez wrote:
| That's how analogies are supposed to work. How do you
| expect civil society to function if people only supported
| civil disobedience when it's their preferred cause?
| freedomben wrote:
| Out of curiosity, how do you feel about labor strikes? If
| customs, border control, longshoremen, or some other union
| decided to strike and picket would you support having the
| feds declare them terrorists and doing the banking thing?
| kubb wrote:
| I don't follow Canadian politics, and I don't know that much
| about Trudeau, but having the capital full of honking, mad
| truckers, holding the government hostage for their demands to
| be met in a time of crisis sounds like an absolute nightmare.
| catgary wrote:
| There had already been one standoff between local residents
| and truckers, I remember there being chatter that the next
| weekend groups were going to coordinate in their
| neighborhoods and drive out the convoy on their own (using
| baseball bats, cast iron skillets, or golf clubs if need be).
| The situation had the potential to turn into an absolute
| blood bath.
| kubb wrote:
| In the US some psychopath straight up shot and killed a
| climate activist who was in the way of his car. It's a
| miracle something similar didn't happen there.
| catgary wrote:
| If someone tried this protest in the US someone would
| have been shot night one.
| taeric wrote:
| In the US? I recall an event in Panama. Quickly googling
| shows the person was a dual US citizen? Maybe that is
| what you are thinking of?
| relaxing wrote:
| OP is probably conflating the environmentalist protestor
| shot in the US by cops and the numerous racial justice
| protestors killed by motorists, along with the incident
| you mentioned. Easy mistake to make.
| taeric wrote:
| I don't remember a protestor shot by cops in the US?
| Searching, I see something happened in Atlanta?
|
| And I remember a few motorist incidents, but numerous?
| Certainly more than I would prefer.
| kubb wrote:
| You're right.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Urbanite weenies posed no genuine threat to those truckers,
| trust me.
| catgary wrote:
| I think it's worth noting that the weekend before this, local
| residents of Ottawa had basically "stormed" one of the trucker
| convoy camps to unblock a road. There were genuine concerns
| that the residents of Ottawa were ready to take matters into
| their own hands, and it would be a bloodbath. Not to mention
| the blockade in Alberta where they were found with guns and a
| pipe bomb, with their communications indicating they were
| planning to murder the RCMP officers on site!
|
| 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).
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Crazy how only Canada has used emergency powers to curtail
| opposition. In fact it did that twice in 50 years. And only
| twenty people getting their rights completely stripped
| because they bothered the federal government workers in
| Ottawa is good enough according to you?
|
| 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.
| toasteros wrote:
| The guy likely to take over is going to use non-emergency
| powers to curtail the rights of trans people.
|
| 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.
| catgary wrote:
| Are you talking about the militant separatists who had
| already committed mailbombings and escalated to
| _assasinating a government official and kidnapping a
| foreign diplomat on Canadian soil_ in 1970?
|
| 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.
| hackandthink wrote:
| "In 1971, official date of the birth of topos theory,
| unfortunately the dream team at Dalhousie was dispersed.
| What happened, that made you go to Denmark ?
|
| 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"
|
| https://www.mat.uc.pt/~picado/lawvere/interview.pdf
| catgary wrote:
| I love Bill Lawvere, but he punched the president of his
| university in the face, he was genuinely lucky to find a
| position in academia afterwards.
| fidotron wrote:
| Amazingly there is someone living very close to the
| airport where they found the body of the Deputy Premier
| of Quebec (Pierre Laporte) in 1970 that flies the flags
| of allegiance to the successors of the terrorists (i.e.
| the MNLQ following from the FLQ) from a pole in his yard
| for everyone on the highway to see.
|
| 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.
| throaway89 wrote:
| yeah what people dont always understand (not saying you
| dont) is that FLQ supporters see themselves as basically
| being occupied by Anglo Canadians. Until the 60's there
| was entrenched discrimination in Montreal against
| catholics and french-speakers. The city even used to have
| two hockey teams, one for Anglos and one for Francos.
| catgary wrote:
| Ehh, I think a surprising amount of the Quebecois'
| problems were self-inflicted by letting the Catholic
| Church run people's lives, and the Quiet Revolution
| helped a lot. Like, it wasn't the anglos bullying
| people's grandmothers into having an eighth child after a
| rough pregnancy, the local priest would take a few
| minutes during mass to call her out in front of he whole
| community.
| throaway89 wrote:
| Yeah I kinda left that out. The Quiet revolution was
| about secularism and Franco rights in their own province.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _Crazy how only Canada has used emergency powers to
| curtail opposition._
|
| 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
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergencies_Act
| staplers wrote:
| We basically have 0 rights the moment a majority decides
| that we don't.
|
| That's literally what a democracy is and has been.. It will
| always seem great until you are the minority.
|
| America had human slaves built into its democracy until the
| majority said otherwise. Unsure why this is so shocking.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| America is specifically designed not to be this and to
| prevent a tyranny of the majority because original
| immigrants to the USA were from minority religions where
| they lived in Europe and had been terrorized plenty.
| krapp wrote:
| The Puritans were a minority group among the original
| settlers to the US, among the Dutch, French, Spanish,
| other British settlers and others. The founders and
| architects of the Constitution and US government were not
| Puritans.
| scheme271 wrote:
| And that designed failed spectacularly from the
| beginning. As the post you're replying to points out,
| slavery is essentially the majority deciding that a
| minority and their descendants have no rights whatsoever.
| This state of affairs lasted until the 1860s and even
| then those rights for the minority were severely
| curtailed until at least the 1960s.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| I wouldn't say it failed spectacularly. The trade-off was
| well known amongst many even at the founding of america.
| There would simply be no America if slavery was
| disallowed from the beginning.
|
| 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.
| Gormo wrote:
| But that's the point of having constitutional limitations
| on political power and how it is exercised.
| Unfortunately, it's all to common to hear arguments that
| the exercise of political power should have no
| limitations so long as it's approved of by a quantitative
| majority.
| layer8 wrote:
| A sufficient majority can change the constitution though.
| It's impossible to have a mechanism that prevents that.
| So this is merely a debate of 51% vs. 67% (or whatever).
| Gormo wrote:
| The amendment process is slow and complex by design. It's
| not just a one-off supermajority, but rather a
| supermajority in both houses of Congress (or a special
| amending convention) followed by a supermajority of
| states each individually ratifying a proposed amendment.
| The most recent constitutional amendment took over 200
| years to be ratified.
|
| 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.
| layer8 wrote:
| My comment was about democracies and their constitutions
| in general. I'm neither Canadian nor American. Yes, there
| are significant degrees in how easy or hard it is, but in
| the end if you have a sufficiently large majority that
| wants to deprive a minority of their rights, the mere
| fact of having a democracy by itself doesn't prevent it.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| IDK if this is a good argument.
|
| 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.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I don't know of any western democracy that has something
| this blatant in their constitution, though I might be
| wrong:
|
| >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?
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> I don 't think the US or France can just do a simple
| (parliamentary!) majority vote to override almost every
| right their citizens have._
|
| 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.
| bawolff wrote:
| > A simple majority vote in any of Canada's 14
| jurisdictions may suspend the core rights of the Charter
|
| 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.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| [flagged]
| mardifoufs wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| Would you please stop perpetuating this flamewar? I asked
| you upthread not to go in that direction, and instead
| you've gone full bore in that direction. Not cool.
|
| (I don't care what side of the argument people are on--I
| care who is breaking the site guidelines and making HN a
| more hellish place.)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| dang wrote:
| Your account has been breaking the site guidelines badly
| in this thread. Would you please stop? Regardless of how
| wrong someone else is or you feel they are, It's not what
| this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
|
| We've had to ask you this before not long ago, so it
| would be good if you would review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and
| please fix this.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| dang, it would help if you would clarify which guideline
| I'm violating.
|
| I see a lot of deep flame bait in this thread. A lot of
| it by people of another country, making claims about my
| own for partisan and ideological purposes. Context here
| is important given news in recent weeks, with Trudeau's
| name on the lips of people like Trump, Musk, etc.
|
| I have a "karma" of almost 20,000 and have been on
| hackernews for a very long time at this point. I'm sure
| my passion is showing through, but it feels odd given my
| citizenship and past here, to single me out.
|
| There are some issues which trigger emotional response. I
| usually don't get into the back and forth response, but
| this is a seriously frustrating thread and I think if
| you're not ready for the level of passionate vitriol this
| topic (we have people driving around with bumper stickers
| reading "F* Trudeau" and this whole topic is tied in with
| COVID, vaccines, etc. etc.) will unleash, it's best to
| lock or flag this whole topic.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't cross into the flamewar style on HN. This
| comment is only dipping a toe in that direction, but still
| --it's the opposite direction to what we're trying for
| here.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Edit: please see
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42616298.
| morkalork wrote:
| It's absolutely astounding that there have not been harsher
| consequences for the police who abandoned their duty in
| Ottawa. Where is the of rule of law here?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The Police Chief lost his job over it. What other
| consequences would you think appropriate?
| morkalork wrote:
| Investigations and penalties for everyone up the chain,
| starting with the frontline officers who were on the
| ground refusing to issue tickets. If an officer chooses
| to not do their job over their political beliefs they do
| not belong on the force.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Absolutely. I'm a paramedic. I will be in front of a
| licensing hearing defending why should be allowed to
| continue as a paramedic to the DOH if I refuse to treat a
| patient because of politics/beliefs, as an EMS provider.
|
| 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.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "If you owe the bank $100, that's your problem. If you
| owe the bank $100 million, that's the bank's problem."
|
| 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.
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| It's not unheard of to disband and reconstitute a police
| department. I would argue its the right move when the
| organization as a whole has effectively gone rogue.
|
| 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-...
| a-priori wrote:
| I was a resident of downtown Ottawa during this period. It
| was bad. We had a young kid and didn't feel even safe walking
| her to a park, because the route crossed over convoy lines
| and there were all sorts of stories of harassment and
| assaults. We didn't even experience the worst of it; lots of
| people dealt with truck horns blaring 24/7, but at least our
| street at least was kept clear as an emergency route.
|
| 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.
| mbrumlow wrote:
| So the threat of violence against a non violent protest
| resulted in the non violent protestors being labeled
| terrorist and justified all the action that followed?
| HappySweeney wrote:
| 95dB air-horn for 16 to 20 hours per day is not non-
| violent.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It takes half a day to get the details over with a judge and
| decide exactly whose and what accounts to lock, those
| truckers were allowed to stay there for months. (And if you
| don't know what exactly to block, you shouldn't be allowed to
| block anything. Maybe you still have enough reason to look at
| their movement, maybe not.)
|
| 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.
| rand_r wrote:
| I don't know why they couldn't do the friggen obvious move of
| asking the police to unblock the roads by force, and
| impounding the vehicles for repeat offences. Going after bank
| accounts was a coward move that never made sense. If I just
| sat down in the middle of a subway tunnel, I would be removed
| by force immediately, no matter what I was protesting. They
| created problems for themselves by not doing the obvious
| solution.
|
| 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.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The city or the province could have done that. They didn't.
| The Feds could only use federal reasons.
|
| The mishandled response to the trucker protest should be
| blamed on the city and the province, not on Trudeau.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| There is room for two failures. The province should have
| enforced the provincial law, and the feds should not have
| have taken action through the banking sector.
| nazcan wrote:
| But this leads to the question if the province is not
| doing it's job, what do you do as the feds?
|
| Not saying they did right, but curious.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| My preference would be that the fed enforce the laws on
| the books themselves (if they have the power to do so),
| or pressure the province to do so (using the democratic
| leverage available).
| beached_whale wrote:
| Provinces are absolutely responsible, policing is all on
| them.
| bvan wrote:
| Ultimately, the responsibility rests with the truckers,
| period.
| nick_ wrote:
| If only more people A) asked this question and B) looked
| into what was (not) happening.
|
| 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.
|
| https://thewalrus.ca/freedom-convoy-the-prince/
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Thing is, the federal government does not have the power to
| "ask the police" to do anything. That's obviously by design
| and part of the demarcation of powers we expect from a
| democracy. The accusations of authoritarianism would have
| been just as drastic (I think?) if the PM had stood up and
| tried to call the RCMP or Ottawa police / OPP to task for
| their inaction and so on.
|
| 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.
| beached_whale wrote:
| It was something like the Ottawa police said they were
| unable to and Ford said it was a local issue or not a
| priority. He was onboard with emergency act as it helped
| with Windsor too.
|
| This was also voted on in Parliament too, 185 to 151
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > concerns that the residents of Ottawa were ready to take
| matters into their own hands, and it would be a bloodbath
|
| 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...
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _Declaring the Emergency acts was overwhelmingly popular in
| Canada and remains one of the most popular things Trudeau
| ever did._
|
| Where on earth does this stat come from?
| bbarnett wrote:
| I don't know, but I live in the NCR, and few I know thought
| it was right.
|
| 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.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| I'm sure people directly affected agree with you, but
| it's been downhill for this regime since the trucker
| protest. We are literally still talking about it, right
| now.
|
| I cannot comprehend how it could be overwhelmingly
| supported.
| mlekoszek wrote:
| To be honest, I can't shake the suspicion that a fair
| share of the talking is not homegrown.
|
| > _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 talking point for the likes of Candace
| Owens, Tucker Carlson, online bot mobs... at this point,
| I think you see where I'm going.
|
| It's difficult to approach these discussions and not feel
| like bad-faith actors are trying to artificially steer
| the conversation. This is especially true when many of
| the loudest defenders of the convoy weren't even there,
| aren't even Canadian, and -- two years later -- may not
| even be people.
|
| That said, I can agree the Emergencies Act probably
| shouldn't have been used here -- but this is really a
| conversation actual Canadians should be owning, since it
| concerns us most directly.
| mlekoszek wrote:
| It's definitely not 'overwhelmingly popular,' but polling
| shows majority support (66%) from Canadians for use of the
| Emergencies Act at the time of the protest.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergencies_Act#Opinion_polli
| n...
| clwg wrote:
| I live in Ottawa. We were failed by all levels of government,
| our police services, and our intelligence services.
|
| 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.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >I hesitate to call them protesters because I don't think
| they had a permit or a cohesive message beside F* Trudeau
|
| 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_
| ".
| Manuel_D wrote:
| You're over an order of magnitude off. Over 200 people were
| debunked. A donation of just $20 could result in someone
| being debanked: https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/even-
| small-donation-t...
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| The federal response was largely due to the abject failure of
| the city & provincial governments to enforce their laws. The
| city and province had plenty of tools to get rid of the
| protesters: noise bylaws, parking bylaws, et cetera. They
| failed completely, so the Federal government was forced to
| intervene. The federal government did not have nuanced tools to
| deal with the truckers so used the blunt hammers they did have.
| glitchc wrote:
| That's basically what happened. Between the three police
| forces, the jurisdiction was unclear. Parliamentary police
| and city police could not decide which laws to enforce as it
| depended on where the protestors were located. The province
| mostly polices highways and small townships that cannot
| afford their own police force. They quickly regained control
| of the highways to divert any additional incoming trucks but
| couldn't step in within city limits for trucks that were
| already there.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > [...] _ought to go through the laws and court system._
|
| 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...
| coldtea wrote:
| An abhorrent part, abused way out of its intended scope in a
| totalitarian way.
| swat535 wrote:
| And the court of law later determined that this was an abuse
| of power and unlawful. The fact that there is an existing law
| that can be abused does not negate the argument that abusing
| it is unlawful.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _And the court of law later determined_ [...]
|
| And an _Act_ -mandated commission said it was warranted:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Order_Emergency_Comm
| iss...
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| And in the Canadian system, are appointed commissions or
| judicial rulings supreme and overriding over the other?
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| In common law systems it is part of government review and
| is not meant to be a ruling on events already happened.
| roenxi wrote:
| On April 25, 2022, Prime Minister Trudeau selected
| Rouleau to be the commissioner of the Public Order
| Emergency Commission inquiry into the invocation of the
| Emergencies Act, which had occurred in response to the
| 2022 Canada convoy protest.
|
| ~ 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.
| rdtsc wrote:
| That sounds a bit like "The police carefully investigated
| themselves and firmly established that no abuse or
| wrongdoing took place".
| threeseed wrote:
| If you're going to talk about the law then words absolutely
| matter:
|
| Abusing a law is not by itself unlawful. You always need to
| actually do something unlawful.
| graeme wrote:
| iirc the finding was that it was within the power of the
| province to handle the situation.
|
| 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.
| throwaway94721A wrote:
| It may have been an emergency in the first days with the
| honking. That largely stopped after a week or so.
|
| 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.
| nsavage wrote:
| I live in Ottawa and lived here during the convoy. Happy to
| answer any questions as an actual resident from anyone about my
| experience.
| indy wrote:
| What were the general public's opinion of the protests?
|
| Also how 'dangerous' was the convoy perceived to be?
|
| Were the actions of the Government deemed to be overreach?
| nsavage wrote:
| The protests lasted quite a long time and I think the
| public's opinion on it changed over time.
|
| 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.
| indy wrote:
| Thanks for replying. As a non-Canadian, your response has
| been more informative than the weeks I spent reading
| Twitter trying to figure out what was happening.
| leptons wrote:
| How bad were the covid restrictions in Canada that the
| truckers were complaining about in 2022? By 2022 most of the
| world had gone back to normal business-as-usual. Why were
| they even protesting? As an outsider looking in, it seemed
| like a mix of ignorance, propaganda, and stupidity made them
| do it.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| This isn't true. At the time the US required proof of
| vaccination at the border too:
| https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/us-vaccine-mandate-
| frei...
|
| This was _implemented_ in October 2021 and wasn 't removed
| AFAIK until May of 2023:
| https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-
| releases...
| leptons wrote:
| How are Canadians occupying Canadian cities supposed to
| lift _US restrictions_? They can 't, that's how. Again,
| it's stupidity, ignorance, and probably some
| propaganda/misinformation that spurred them on.
| nsavage wrote:
| Without looking up the specifics, by the time of the
| convoy, the vast majority of covid restrictions were gone.
| They liked to complain about vaccine passports, which
| Canada had, but by 2022 the vaccine passports were gone
| everywhere except the US border, by the request of the US
| government. So, from the outside, these guys were
| protesting and occupying Ottawa over actions of the _US_
| government. On the other hand, these guys don 't really
| like being talked down to no matter what the elites say the
| real problem is. It started as a protest against vaccine
| passports but really turned into a ragefest against the
| establishment.
| wmoxam wrote:
| It's important to note that some of the key people who
| were behind these protests were not truckers, but were
| involved in earlier attempts at mass protest in Ottawa as
| part of the 'yellow vests' group from 2019
| likeabatterycar wrote:
| What is your opinion of Kraft Dinner?
|
| Is KD unhealthy slop or delicious, and how do you feel about
| adding hot dogs or other toppings?
| jamie_ca wrote:
| Offtopic to politics, but browsers these days support arbitrary
| text anchors.
|
| docs: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
| US/docs/Web/URI/Fragment/Te...
|
| your link: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/debanking-
| and-debunki...
| codethief wrote:
| Wow, TIL. Looks like a fairly recent feature, though (at
| least in certain browsers).
| tjarrett wrote:
| Wow. Came here expecting to read about truckers and instead
| learned something really useful! Thank you!
| arduanika wrote:
| Gentlemen you can't discuss web protocols tips on here,
| this is a tech forum!
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _Offtopic to politics, but browsers these days support
| arbitrary text anchors._
|
| 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).
| freedomben wrote:
| Agreed. I'm in the minority I'm sure, but I think this is
| an anti-feature. In addition to your good points, it's also
| very fragile as a small change in the text of the page can
| break the link. It also leads to monstrous URLs that are
| quite hard to read for people who don't know about this
| feature.
| Gormo wrote:
| It's a great way to link to the source of a verbatim
| quote, though. It goes straight to the relevant context,
| and breaks only if the source of the quote itself is
| somehow changed, making the new inconsistency clear.
| cdrini wrote:
| > 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.
|
| 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?
| mrbonner wrote:
| I, for 1 sec, thought you said press Crtl F to pay respects.
| bawolff wrote:
| People on hn seem weirdly obsessed with trudeau's handling of
| the trucker protest. Regardless of what you think of it, at
| this point it is very old news and trudeau's actions were
| controversial but largely popular.
|
| The handling of the trucker protest is not why he resigned. It
| is not why he is unpopular.
| hn-acct wrote:
| I live and work with mostly conservatives and none of them
| supported the truckers nor do they even mention it. Their
| grievances are more typical - inflation, taxes, and
| immigration.
|
| I think we need to be careful when reading these opinions to
| not mix up Americans' views, Russian trolls with legitimate
| Canadian discourse.
| SpecialistK wrote:
| I'll quote my own comment on the trucker situation from a year
| and a half ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37450666
|
| > 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.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I'll get downvoted for this by the libertarian contingent here,
| but too bad:
|
| Honestly, they _were_ terrorists.
|
| Also if these were left-wing protesters they would have been
| teargassed and dragged into police vans on day one. Like the
| G20 in Toronto.
|
| Which I don't hear a peep about from the same people who are
| wringing their hands about people who threatened the citizens
| of Ottawa and laid on their horns day and night for weeks.
|
| Furthermore, if these events had happened on the US side of the
| border, DHS would have had a field day. We had people with guns
| blocking international borders. How do you all you Americans
| with your tears about "liberty" think that would have gone over
| on the US side? Kid gloves were used here in comparison.
|
| I saw NAZI flags and pro-Putin signs all over the place, people
| defacing monuments, people keeping people up all night on
| horns, people threatening people walking on the street, cases
| of assault. Emergency vehicles and hospitals blocked.
|
| It's only because the police refused to do their job, along
| with the provincial government, that the feds had to intervene.
|
| This was an event that -- like Jan 6 -- was meant to try to
| take the elected government down. Organized by a group of far
| right activists who stated as much, and whose interests had
| nothing to do with truckers as they had organized other convoy
| events before about totally different issues (pipelines, etc.).
| And the vast majority of truckers were fine with the situation
| and the vast majority of the protesters were not "truckers."
|
| I have no sympathy. Downvote away. I don't share in all the
| handwringing, and I don't believe in a "slippery slope"
| argument here. I've been on the receiving end of pepper spray
| and riot police before and I _expected_ it. They should, too.
|
| What we sadly have here, on the anniversary of January 6th, is
| the tacit acceptance of far right authoritarian putsch attempts
| as part of our political culture. And that's a disgusting
| return to the problems from that _last_ century 's 20s and 30s.
| throwaway12912 wrote:
| There were four people with Nazi flags in the beginning who
| disappeared almost instantly. A classic way of discrediting a
| protest. (A real Nazi however received a warm reception in
| the Canadian parliament: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-
| canada-66943005)
|
| No one had a pro-Putin sign? Why would they? At that time
| Putin was sitting at 20m long tables, which should have
| pleased Fauci himself. Putin was "following the science"!
|
| I'm really opposed to this classic way of mixing an imaginary
| "far right" with Putin as if they do not have their own
| grievances.
|
| You are right about the honking, which should have been dealt
| with more quickly but stopped after an injunction after a
| couple of days.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| You don't want to be light handed with a bunch of cosplayers
| blocking people from getting to places. It's a life or death
| situation.
| hn-acct wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Uh really? Is this another version of "Both sides" claiming you
| don't know the pulse whilst amplifying a more right leaning,
| niche, view?
| soupbowl wrote:
| Niche view? Nobody likes Trudeau, not even is own party that
| is why they are pressuring him to step down. The comment you
| are commenting on might not be well thought out or in depth
| but it is how MANY average Canadians feel.
| diggan wrote:
| > I'm not on the pulse of Canadian politics
|
| > 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?
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Tell me... How do you feel about the Weimar German government's
| response to Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch in 1923? Or Mussolini's
| "March on Rome" ?
|
| Just... hypothetically. Say this were to happen today? What
| would be the right way to respond, given what you know of
| history?
| karaterobot wrote:
| I'm having trouble learning anything from this stream of
| disconnected, time-sorted tweetlike objects. I'm posting this on
| the off chance that a better article exists, and someone can
| point me to it. I assume it's too early for that though.
| collin128 wrote:
| I find CTV to be pretty good and centered:
| https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/justin-trudeau-stepping-down...
| karaterobot wrote:
| Much better, thank you.
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| The goal isn't to learn, it's to be entertained
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| the goal isn't even to entertain. It is to spend time on a
| page. It doesn't matter if you are frustrated, angry, or
| confused. just keep scrolling
| 99_00 wrote:
| Canada has no term limit. Leaders stay on until they have lost
| the support of their party.
|
| 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
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Have they ever thought of implementing a term limit? I'm
| confused why they think that is not necessary.
| 99_00 wrote:
| The Prime Ministership is by convention and not defined in
| a constitution
| notevenremotely wrote:
| Westminster parliamentary tradition works on a lot of
| unwritten convention.
| err4nt wrote:
| Elections have a deadline after which a new election can be
| called, but there's no number of terms served that then
| stops a re-elected leader from taking office if they win
| another election. It's not the case that people can just
| stay in office without holding elections forever.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| Does this type of role have a term limit anywhere? e.g. US
| house speaker doesn't have a term limit.
| TaurenHunter wrote:
| For liberals to give up power in both Canada and US so hurriedly,
| there must something really bad brewing that they don't want to
| be blamed for.
| dralley wrote:
| Trudeau has been unpopular for years and hideously unpopular
| for the past couple of months, mostly as a result of the
| current state of things being bad (and as they've been in power
| for nearly 10 years, they already cop the blame for that), not
| hypothetical future bad things.
|
| No need to get conspiratorial.
| TaurenHunter wrote:
| It wouldn't be a conspiracy, just strategic thinking.
|
| 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.
| dralley wrote:
| >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?
| TaurenHunter wrote:
| No need to get emotional.
|
| 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.
| dralley wrote:
| The timing, if you ask most Canadians, is months _late_.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| I don't know if it is about blame for the other side, but I
| can see Trudeau being a scapegoat for all of Canada's
| problems. I DO think he is responsible for a lot of Canada's
| problems in the cultural side, especially as it affects
| politics. But the laws and realities of governing the country
| are also the fault of legislators who in turn are voted in by
| people. So to me what I view this as, is people rejecting the
| current highly progressive order of things in Canada but also
| the left leaning side of Canada's politics ejecting Trudeau
| as a way to not bring blame onto the rest of the party and
| its politicians.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| The entire market is due for major correction. I'm delighted I
| get to blame it on conservatives when it happens. It was
| probably inevitable, no matter what party is in power. That's
| just how it is when you get two standard deviations away from
| the mean.
|
| https://www.currentmarketvaluation.com/models/s&p500-mean-re...
| FredPret wrote:
| You think the market is going to collapse but you're happy
| about it because it'll be bad for the conservatives?
|
| You might want to rethink a few things.
| spiritplumber wrote:
| The market collapsing will happen either way. I'm queer, so
| I'd rather it be blamed on the homophobes.
| FredPret wrote:
| I don't like taxes and bureaucracy so now I'm a
| homophobe?!
| spiritplumber wrote:
| if you're willing to vote for the party that would gladly
| get people like me killed, yes. your tax returns aren't
| more important than my existence.
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| What, exactly, is the mechanism by which the Tories
| winning the Canadian election _causes_ your murder?
| fullshark wrote:
| It's that they were the party for the COVID money pump hangover
| / inflation. The conservatives lost power in the UK for the
| same reason.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Liberals did not "give up power" in the US. They _lost_ power
| in the US. That 's not the same thing.
| TaurenHunter wrote:
| They have messed up so much in this election that it must
| have been on purpose.
| freedomben wrote:
| Hanlon's Razor seems to fit too well IMHO. Assuming malice
| is a hard one to swallow when the evidence of bad decision-
| making is everywhere to see. To be on purpose for example
| you would have to assume that the hordes of people inside
| and outside the administration and the media all conspired
| to cover up Biden's deteriorating state, with the knowledge
| (or high probability) that he would lose in the first
| debate and step down without giving Harris enough time (or
| whatever theory you believe to explain why she lost). Just
| that portion alone is quite hard to believe IMHO.
| TaurenHunter wrote:
| No, there is no need to assume "hordes of people", just
| the top echelon, the ones knowing the real situation.
|
| 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...
| nemo44x wrote:
| Is Canada better today then when he started as PM? I struggle to
| agree that it is. Housing is as bad as it has ever been and the
| immigration decisions seem to have been so careless that even
| people that would agree with immigration as a general principal
| are horrified by it by and large. The Canadian dollar has
| collapsed VS the USD.
|
| I guess it always ends bad if you stick around long enough.
| jyscao wrote:
| > Is Canada better today then when he started as PM?
|
| 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.
| Cumpiler69 wrote:
| _> The Canada I grew up with [...] is completely shattered._
|
| What happened?
| jyscao wrote:
| One could endlessly go on about the economy/COL,
| immigration, crumbling healthcare, housing crisis, far-left
| ideology going mainstream, etc.
|
| 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.
| squigz wrote:
| > economy, healthcare costs, housing crisis, and... far
| left ideology
|
| 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?
| soupbowl wrote:
| Maybe he means the extreme levels of immigration that
| have tossed fuel on the housing and healthcare crisis?
| tensor wrote:
| For context, the liberal party is right of centre these
| days. We don't even have a "far-left" party. The NDP is
| solidly left, probably slightly left of what the liberals
| were years ago when this poster thinks things were
| wonderful.
|
| 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.
| lioeters wrote:
| Whenever I see people using the term "far left", I
| realize its meaning has been subverted and neutered to
| mean something else entirely. Same with "woke". It's very
| Orwellian to see how successfully these words have been
| distorted to obscure their nature and power.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I think people are talking past each other. Some of these
| parties are "far left" on social issues while
| simultaneously being "moderate right" on economic issues.
| So you can label these parties either way, depending on
| what's convenient to your argument.
| johnny_canuck wrote:
| Such an odd anecdote given that it wasn't that long ago
| Igor Kenk was the king of bike theft in Toronto.
| digging wrote:
| > One could endlessly go on...
|
| 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.
| randomopining wrote:
| Look at Japan as a homogenous and extremely (if not the
| most) high trust society.
| krapp wrote:
| >Look at Japan as a homogenous and extremely (if not the
| most) high trust society.
|
| Why does Japan need separate trains for women, and why
| can the shutter sound on Japanese phones not be turned
| off?
| digging wrote:
| Um... why exactly am I looking for a highly homogenous
| society?
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| Ah yes, increasing theft is just a fact of the
| "developed" world, and simultaneously, anyone that claims
| theft has increased is just imagining things.
| digging wrote:
| > Ah yes, increasing theft is just a fact of the
| "developed" world
|
| 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.
| cynicalpeace wrote:
| anecdote is actually data tho lol
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Every store in my town now locks up anything small that
| costs more than $20 in cages. Talking to some people
| working there it was pretty common for people to walk in,
| take a bunch of shit, and walk out. Drivers are
| completely out of control. I've witnessed at least 3
| people run red lights in the last 2 years, while I can
| remember only one such incident in the 10 years before
| that. Signalling is no longer something drivers do - like
| at all. For the last 2 years teenagers have terrorized
| the local park on Canada Day shooting fireworks at random
| passers by. With someone setting off fireworks under an
| occupied baby carriage last year. Car thefts in Toronto
| got so bad that people were building retractable bollards
| in their driveways[1].
|
| 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...
| digging wrote:
| Still mostly anecdotal, but a better answer, and probably
| belongs higher up in the thread actually.
| variadix wrote:
| Technology isn't the issue
|
| Mass immigration and increasing wealth disparity are much
| more relevant.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| This anecdote could be explained by something as simple
| as her forgetting to lock her bike consistently, locking
| it incorrectly, using poor locks, etc.
| vizzier wrote:
| The 90s were a demographic golden age for Canada but people
| get old. This is a problem true of most of the western
| world and is upstream from almost any other issue.
| papercrane wrote:
| > The Canadian dollar has collapsed VS the USD.
|
| 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.
| srid wrote:
| CAD was actually on parity with USD between 2007-2012.
| papercrane wrote:
| Yes, but that was a very unusual time and can be attributed
| to the US financial crisis. In addition to money fleeing
| the US, the Canadian and US interest rates diverged to
| strengthen the Canadian dollar.
| glitchc wrote:
| That's actually bad for the economy. Canadian companies
| benefit from the lower dollar as goods are often sold in
| USD, but wages are paid in CAD. 0.75 to 0.8 is the
| historical benchmark for the exchange rate.
| maeil wrote:
| Can you name a similarly wealthy country that is actually
| better today than it was on the date he started as a PM?
|
| 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.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| America is, especially since 2021 but nobody wants to believe
| it.
| mlekoszek wrote:
| Not sure why the parent comment is being downvoted. By most
| sources, the States has been the exception and not the rule
| post-pandemic.
|
| * https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-
| notes/why-...
|
| * https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-us-recovery-from-
| covi...
| c0redump wrote:
| Depends who you are, I guess. If you're a young person who
| is not financially stable enough to form a family because
| of high housing prices, then you would disagree. If you're
| a relatively well-off person with assets like real estate
| and equities, then you're quite happy. It's all a matter of
| perspective.
|
| 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)
| 3vidence wrote:
| Take that problem in the states an multiply it by 3x in
| Canada.
|
| 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.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| If nobody believes it, then is it actually true?
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| Well, that is the ultimate philosophical rabbit hole.
|
| 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.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Agreed, it's a rabbit hole, so nobody is right. I'm just
| on the camp of -- if people feel that they're worse off
| than before, then telling them how "they have to feel
| better because of objective facts" won't cut it.
| adverbly wrote:
| Wrong date. He was PM 2015.
| adverbly wrote:
| Since 2015? Easy: Norway, Poland, Greece, Netherlands,
| Ireland, Singapore, USA probably.
|
| 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.
| mkipper wrote:
| > The Canadian dollar has collapsed VS the USD
|
| 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.
| johnny_canuck wrote:
| It always is this. Same reason the CAD was at parity during
| the financial crisis.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| After 2008 we also "benefited" from very high oil prices
| which drove the dollar higher
|
| 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.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Canada is definitely worse than it was ten years ago, but all
| of the major problems are provincial responsibilities: housing,
| health care, education, policing.
|
| The largely conservative provinces have done a very good job of
| blaming Trudeau and immigration for problems that are entirely
| their own.
| srid wrote:
| Out of curiosity, how is the housing & health care situation
| in those conservative provinces compared to other provinces
| (like Quebec, where I live in)?
| soupbowl wrote:
| I moved from a liberal province to a conservative province
| last year. My cost of living is 25% lower, gas is much
| cheaper and I was able to buy a new beautiful house which
| was an impossibility in my previous province.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| It's instructive to compare Vancouver to Toronto. 10 years
| ago in BC health care was in worse shape and housing was
| ~2X the cost of Toronto. In the past 10 years BC has had an
| NDP government and Ontario a Conservative one. Both housing
| & health care have gotten worse in BC, but at a much lower
| rate than in Ontario. Today health care in BC is in much
| better shape than Ontario, and the cost of housing in
| Vancouver is about the same as it is in Toronto.
| Matthias247 wrote:
| Are there any numbers/data for the quality of healthcare
| in the provinces over time?
|
| 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).
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > Are there any numbers/data for the quality of
| healthcare in the provinces over time?
|
| Good question. Let me know if you find some. My assertion
| is anecdotal, I have FOAF doctors who have moved to BC.
| markus_zhang wrote:
| Living in QC, I'm scared about the future of medical care
| and infrastructure. I wonder too what's the situations for
| other provinces.
| joshlemer wrote:
| Quebec has been led by the Conservative CAQ party since
| 2018.
| RegnisGnaw wrote:
| Immigration? The massive amount of temp foreign students?
| BJones12 wrote:
| > The largely conservative provinces have done a very good
| job of blaming Trudeau and immigration for problems that are
| entirely their own.
|
| 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.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Does immigration make these things worse? Yes. But it's
| only a very small part of the problem. You can't blame the
| entire problem on a minor cause.
|
| 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.
| BunsanSpace wrote:
| The problem with Trudeau's government is he didn't/doesn't
| consult with provinces very much. They continue to announce
| programs and initiatives that live in the territory of the
| provinces without provincial buy in.
|
| 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.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| It seems like every other week I hear a news article about
| a joint announcement between BC & the federal government
| having to do with housing or health care. It takes 2 to co-
| operate.
| BunsanSpace wrote:
| Go listen to the statements the PMs made after their all
| provinces meetings. A lot of it is "back off from our
| turf".
|
| Previous govts had a minister who's only job was managing
| provincial-federal relations and making sure the feds and
| libs moved in sync
| joshlemer wrote:
| Housing, healthcare and policing being provincial
| responsibility is an oversimplification. Provinces are
| basically compelled to comply with the federal Canada Health
| Act under threat of being taxed for, but not receiving the
| huge Canada Health Transfers which account for ~12% of
| provincial revenues. Housing on the supply side is largely
| provincial, but the feds could still take a larger role. They
| have had a long time to think of ways to bring in more
| skilled labour in the construction industry rather than, say,
| the fast food industry. And let alone thinking ways to solve
| the housing crisis, the Liberals wouldn't even admit until a
| few months ago that the price of housing is too high and
| should go down.
|
| 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.
| Hilift wrote:
| Canada is in approximately the same unfortunate position of
| being a supplicant state of the US. This was apparent as far
| back as 2018 or so. The US "Commerce Department" recommended
| sanctions on Canada for a trade violation in timber. The worst
| case sanctions add about $9,000 to the cost of a new single
| family home in the US.
|
| "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...
| glitchc wrote:
| A big reason driving the collapse of the Canadian dollar is the
| incumbent government's climate change policy. Since being
| elected to power, the government has regulated, stalled and
| effectively defunded the fossil fuel industry, accounting for
| approx. 22-30% of Canada's GDP. That loss of revenue is felt in
| the dollar exchange.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| This is not true in the slightest. Beyond the fact that the
| government went so far as to buy a pipeline to ensure added
| capacity for Alberta oil sands development, they've been
| enormously supportive of LNG development in BC, approving
| many projects and recently going so far as to give a $500M
| loan toward a project.
|
| https://www.ipolitics.ca/news/crown-corp-
| loans-500-million-f...
| glitchc wrote:
| Please stop spreading lies and FUD. The pipeline buyout was
| too little too late after the government stalled and
| delayed permits over never-ending environmental
| assessments. All in all, the projected cost of capital
| flight exceeds $30 billion CAD (the article is from 2019):
|
| 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-...
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > the _courts_ stalled and delayed permits over never-
| ending environmental assessments.
|
| FTFY.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Depends on who you're talking to.
|
| 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.
| RegnisGnaw wrote:
| The problem is that massive spike in immigration under J.T.
| is making the housing issue worse.
| RegnisGnaw wrote:
| https://x.com/jayvas/status/1779557729629073660/photo/1
|
| That's the problem with J.T., our economic growth has been
| vastly Government employees.. our private sector is dying..
| adverbly wrote:
| Housing has gotten worse in many places.
|
| I hate to be repeat a meme but land value tax would fix this.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Only the provinces have the constitutional authority to
| impose a land value tax. (The cities get their property
| taxing rights from the province).
| adverbly wrote:
| Ding ding ding!
|
| 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.
| 3vidence wrote:
| Seems odd though that despite these issues being
| provincial that every province is seemingly struggling
| with these issues...
|
| Almost like there is a larger macroeconomic force at
| play.
| digging wrote:
| I don't see how it's odd at all. The kinds of changes
| that would stabilize housing and make growth more
| sustainable would threaten the interests of many wealthy
| people, including politicians themselves.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| It's about time for a rethink of politics in Canada. The sharp
| turn away from classic liberalism towards authoritarianism, with
| encroachment on free speech, gun rights, and other freedoms -
| especially as seen during the height of the COVID pandemic - has
| been deeply concerning. Trudeau has also been friendly - and
| perhaps even submissive - to Xi Jinping. And he has relied on the
| vote banks of groups that shouldn't be dictating Canadian
| politics, like Khalistan supporters (an insurrectionist terrorist
| movement). I hope Canada returns to a set of values that are, as
| historically true, aligned with America's constitutional values,
| so these countries can be more clearly united.
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| Constitutionalism is whatever, but it is interesting how much
| more dogmatically divided Canada seems to be getting under the
| decidedly more authoritarian administration of Trudeau.
| Everyone's worried about violence and terrorism but terrorists
| are a, semantically, political construct and a product of
| authoritarianism and inequality.
|
| I wonder what this says about where the US is headed..........
| segasaturn wrote:
| > Trudeau has also been friendly - and perhaps even submissive
| - to Xi Jinping
|
| Gonna need to see a source on that. Canada even arrested Huawei
| executive Meng Wanzhou on behalf of the US on some made-up
| sanctions charges so that America could pressure the Chinese
| government in their trade war. The other part about Khalistan
| is a talking point from Modi's India, which has been busted for
| conducting assassinations against Khalistani activists in
| Canada and the US.
| interestica wrote:
| He has not (yet) resigned. He has announced his intention to
| resign. He will step down when a new leader is selected via the
| internal Liberal leadership race. Additionally, Parliament is
| prorogued until March 24 via his request of the Governor-General.
|
| "Trudeau to resign as prime minister after Liberal leadership
| race"
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-news-conference-1.7...
| ygjb wrote:
| True, but this is normal; two other Prime Ministers have taken
| this approach over the last 30 years, Brian Mulroney and Jean
| Chretien both announced their intention to resign, and then
| held leadership conventions to select a new party leader before
| actually resigning.
| RONROC wrote:
| Intent to resign seems a lot like "just need a couple more
| months to steal the copper pipe out of the wall"
|
| The damage this man has done to Canada is astounding. They
| should drag him out
| TriangleEdge wrote:
| I have migrated from Canada to the USA and my metrics for wealth,
| ease of mind, actually working while at work, outgoingness, etc
| instantly improved. I don't plan on ever going back. I feel
| chagrin at seeing Canada fail. I'm glad to see Justin Trudeau
| pressured out, I know there won't be meaningful change associated
| with the decision, but I have hope.
| sangnoir wrote:
| The USA is great when you're working age and are healthy.
| Outside the 18-65 age range, not so much. I hope Canada will
| not morph into USA-lite.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Or if you have older family members you care about. Or if you
| don't want your children having to practice 'active shooter'
| drills during their school days.
| avgDev wrote:
| My toddler had active shooter drills in day care.....I
| sometimes think about leaving US.
| objektif wrote:
| Many of my friends are also thinking of just leaving to
| Europe. This whole thing about running after more and
| more money may just not be worth it at the end.
| matwood wrote:
| Nowhere is perfect, but I see many places in the EU as a
| great lifestyle arbitrage. If someone made or can
| continue to make US level money while living in the EU,
| that's a great situation. Depending on the country, visas
| can be challenging, but most HN skillsets will qualify
| for digital nomad visas.
|
| We bought a place 2 years ago and are in the process of
| fixing up (it was used as a vacation home).
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| I think 26-45 might be the more realistic ideal range. Even
| then, if you have chronic health problems, godspeed.
|
| There's certainly more wealth _available_ if you have the
| means to get it though.
| bko wrote:
| Is it because people outside of 18 and 65 don't have to pay
| rent or a mortgage? Also one of the often touted benefits of
| Canada to US is the public healthcare system, but after 65
| most people are on Medicare which is adequate and under 25
| generally under your parents insurance.
|
| Genuinely curious whats better under Canadian system for the
| young and old.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > 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.
| dismalaf wrote:
| There is no social safety net. Half my town burned down
| in a _national park_ , including my own home. You think
| the Federal government did anything? You think there was
| any net at all?
|
| 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?
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Your first problem is best solved by writing to your MP.
| Your Conservative MP.
|
| Your second problem is the responsibility of your
| provincial government. Your Conservative provincial
| government.
| dismalaf wrote:
| We did write to our Conservative MP and in the end, he
| was able to help with some documents. It shouldn't take
| intervention by a politician to intervene on our behalf
| for document renewal after a natural disaster... 20 years
| ago, passport renewals took like a week. Never a problem
| until this government.
|
| You know how long it took to replace our Provincial
| documents? Days. At zero cost. With zero hassle. The
| provincial government also contributed way more help in
| general, despite our town being in the national park and
| not actually under the purview of the province.
|
| As for the second point, our province is the largest per
| capita contributor to equalisation... Meaning we
| contribute the most to the federal healthcare pool but
| receive the least amount of money back. And it's not like
| healthcare is better in other provinces.
|
| At this point I'd prefer private healthcare. It's what we
| have in the EU. It's what our dental care is anyway.
|
| And if you want to make it a Conservative vs. Liberal
| thing, our province is already the richest in Canada and
| the only drag we have on our economy is the Federal
| government stealing our wealth and preventing us from
| exporting products. We'd be 100% better as part of the
| US.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| As someone who is going to be 65 in a couple years and is
| researching Medicare options... it seems like a bit of a
| mess. The drug plans have been separated out so you have to
| buy those separately. If you get an "advantage" plan then
| you've got the same old "in-network" "out of network" BS to
| deal with and they can and do deny coverage. If you get
| plain old Medicare (probably what I'll opt for) you can
| theoretically see any doctor (but there are some that don't
| take Medicare) but you still have to buy a "Medigap" plan.
| Looking at the costs for my wife and I being on Medicare is
| still going to be something like $700/month so don't think
| that when you get to Medicare age that you won't have to
| pay any insurance premiums anymore. We're currently paying
| about $400/month for a silver plan and dental through the
| ACA so our premiums will actually go up under Medicare.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| My grandparents emigrated from the US to Canada in the late
| 80s when they were in their 60s. One of their daughters had
| married a Canadian decades before and she sponsored them.
| They loved it. They felt like they got better care up there.
| CamelCaseName wrote:
| What was your path of immigration into the US as a Canadian?
|
| Any tips or advice?
| TriangleEdge wrote:
| I got a TN while working for big tech, met my wife, got
| married, and got a married based GC. The GC took 2 years.
| wk_end wrote:
| If you're posting on Hacker News, you probably have a skill
| set that'll allow you to get a job covered by a TN.
|
| 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.
| notevenremotely wrote:
| You can apply for a Green Card directly from TN status,
| although timing has been an issue recently.
| wk_end wrote:
| Not a lawyer, but isn't that kind of dicey? The TN is
| non-immigration and temporary - it's not _supposed_ to be
| used if you have any intention of permanently migrating.
| I 'd worry about it putting your TN status in jeopardy.
| notevenremotely wrote:
| H1-B is non-immigrant and temporary. L1 is non-immigrant
| and temporary.
|
| 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.
| wk_end wrote:
| H1-B and L-1 are both dual intent [0]. TN isn't.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual_intent
| boringg wrote:
| Pro tip - its about to change so either move fast under
| current regs or wait.
| avgDev wrote:
| I feel like this site has a bit of a bias when it comes to the
| USA. Most devs are highly compensated in the USA and can afford
| whatever.
|
| Being poor or sick sucks here.
| anonporridge wrote:
| There is not and never has been any place on Earth where
| being poor and sick doesn't suck.
| busterarm wrote:
| But at least in the US, if you can afford the treatment,
| you can get it.
| tensor wrote:
| But at least in first world countries, unlike the US, you
| WILL get treatment. Even if you are poor, like 95% of the
| US population.
| busterarm wrote:
| No that's the thing, you can't get the treatment if it
| doesn't exist.
|
| 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.
| contagiousflow wrote:
| Is that not two different tradeoffs? One is first come
| first serve and the other is purely if you have the
| resources at the time? The only people I see that praise
| the "guarantee if you can afford it", are indeed, the
| ones that can afford it.
| busterarm wrote:
| Soviet bread lines were first come first serve too and I
| don't know any former Soviet state residents gushing
| about how great those times were. Those 3 MRI machines
| that I mentioned had to service 1/3 of the population of
| Canada at the time -- about 10 million people.
|
| 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.
| itishappy wrote:
| > For the years that i was living in Ontario there were
| only 3 MRI machines across the entire province.
|
| 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...
| busterarm wrote:
| Early 2000s. When I left in 2003 there were 5 and then
| they had a few years where they added 20-25 per year.
|
| 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.
| lbrito wrote:
| There are many places where it sucks much, much less.
| nostromo wrote:
| Most of Canada is pretty poor now.
|
| From the Economist: https://archive.is/UdixF/ec46ebf7fe812cd5
| e9432f45f68bd142e6c...
|
| 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.
| wk_end wrote:
| You say "now" as though it's ever not been the case. These
| comparisons do a poor job of taking into account cost-of-
| living and quality-of-life; it's simply not the case that
| you're better off in Montgomery than Toronto.
| nostromo wrote:
| The median wages for Toronto and Montgomery are actually
| quite similar:
|
| 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-...
| wk_end wrote:
| > The person living in Montgomery can easily afford a
| house and a middle-class life. Can the person in Toronto?
|
| 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.
| hn-acct wrote:
| Stop spreading misinformation.
| throaway89 wrote:
| The social services are better in Canada though. The big
| downside is the lack of quickly available treatment for
| serious-but-not-life-threatening illness.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > The big downside is the lack of quickly available
| treatment for serious-but-not-life-threatening illness.
|
| 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.
| bko wrote:
| It doesn't help if you can't afford a house. If you just
| look at a simple crude statistic like gdp per capital US
| is 83% higher. You can't make stuff appear out of thin
| air, there's less resources to go around and people are
| objectively worse off
| throaway89 wrote:
| It actually does help, in fact it helps MORE if you cant
| afford a house, or are homeless, to have a strong social
| net. Not arguing that the US isn't richer or can offer
| more financial resources to its citizens.
| mellosouls wrote:
| Possibly it does have that bias (which is to be expected
| considering its origins and target audience), but I've
| generally found a good faith and generous reception to pro-EU
| arguments (in counter to pro-USA comments) here as well.
| dagmx wrote:
| I will state the opposite and say that my quality of life has
| dramatically improved after moving from the US to Canada.
|
| 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.
| tonymet wrote:
| can i ask what you do?
| dagmx wrote:
| Computer graphics software engineer.
| yibg wrote:
| I'm a Canadian living in the US as well. I definitely make more
| and am able to save more here. I have better job opportunities
| and also more interesting work. Where I am the weather is also
| much better. If money wasn't an issue I'd move back to Canada
| in an instant (but maybe my view of Canada is outdated, been
| away for > 10 years). Why?
|
| - Lower wealth inequality
|
| - Safer, with lower crime rates, especially violent crime
|
| - Higher life expectancy
| wk_end wrote:
| I lived in the US for around ten years after college and
| moved back early during COVID. I'd always _wanted_ to go
| back, and had the possibility of keeping my American salary
| and working remotely; it seemed like a no-brainer, given how
| unstable things were feeling in the US at the time.
|
| 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.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| Also a Canadian living in the US.
|
| 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.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| I never voted for Justin Trudeau and don't like him, but despite
| all the angry rhetoric right now in the long term I think he will
| be considered by history to be one of the better Canadian PMs.
|
| 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.
| 3vidence wrote:
| There is absolutely no way he will be looked at as one of the
| better Canadian PMs..
|
| 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.
| notevenremotely wrote:
| Half of those issues are provincial.
|
| 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.
| joshlemer wrote:
| It's more complicated than that. Technically healthcare is
| a provincial responsibility in the constitution but the
| feds bought their way into healthcare and regulate it
| through the Canada Health Act. The Feds cannot legally
| compel provinces to comply with the CHA but if they don't
| comply with it, they won't receive the federal health
| transfers which would essentially bankrupt the province.
| The province would still be getting taxed at the high
| federal rates, but without getting it back, to the tune of
| ~12% of total Provincial revenues.
|
| 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.
| adrr wrote:
| Unemployment during his term besides covid was at record lows
| and still below the historic average of 7.5%.
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/808294/unemployment-
| rate...
| loceng wrote:
| He increased size of Federal government by 43% since 2015 -
| from Grok: "By March 31, 2024, the federal government's
| payroll included 367,772 employees, up from 257,034 in
| 2015."
|
| 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.
| ploxiln wrote:
| My rough impression is that immigration and housing policy
| contributed significantly to his low approval ratings. Trudeau
| enacted a rather large increase in immigration a few years ago,
| and this caused a rather large increase in housing and food
| costs, with understandable economic repercussions, and changed
| Canadian attitudes over that time due to the related economic
| stress...
|
| For ref: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJHm03osbHc
| adrr wrote:
| Also record low unemployment. 4.9% in 2022 set records. For
| comparison Canada's average unemployment rate is 7.5% over the
| last 50 years.
|
| https://www.cicnews.com/2022/07/canadas-unemployment-rate-dr...
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| The irony is that it was industry (especially small business)
| freaking out _about_ that low unemployment rate and the
| pressure it was putting on wages that led to the bulk of
| Trudeau 's demise.
|
| 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.
| loceng wrote:
| Please look at these numbers in depth - not how they're
| presenting them.
|
| 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.
| RegnisGnaw wrote:
| One of my big issues with J.T. is his massive waste of money on
| gun control. The vast majority of guns used in crimes in Canada
| are illegal guns from the US, with most being hand guns.
|
| 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.
| gpi wrote:
| I was expecting this to be a Beaverton article.
| ciconia wrote:
| Is it just me or is the quality of politicians on a downward
| spiral? Between retirement-age out-of-touch boomers, clueless
| good-looking male liberals and corrupt authoritarian plutocrats,
| it sure feels like there's a shortage of honest hard-working
| people in leadership positions.
|
| 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?
| adverbly wrote:
| Not just you. And to answer your question, I don't think it's
| politicians but the entire way that society disagrees and
| discusses important topics.
|
| 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!
| roncesvalles wrote:
| I don't think so. I think that the archetype of what a
| politician should _look like_ has broadened from a
| hypermasculine silver fox rich-grandpa type with a mid-Atlantic
| accent. Bill Clinton was the last one.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| I'm not saying nothing's changed, but there was a lot of dirt
| on previous politicians that didn't get surfaced and pored over
| in the 20th century, as it has been in the 21st. The saying
| about not wanting to know how sausages or legislation gets
| made, is a pretty old one.
| imzadi wrote:
| It's worth keeping in mind that truck strikes have been used to
| disrupt infrastructure to prepare for coups.
| jmyeet wrote:
| Nothing will change because no Canadian government will lower
| house prices and that's what absolutely needs to happen.
|
| 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.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > 3. Outright fascists.
|
| 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?
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| One steelman might be to replace "fascist" by "Malthusian
| populist", eg: someone who wants to decrease the national
| population of nonwealthy people to place less strain on what
| they see as a fixed pie of resources for the remaining
| "first-class" population.
| jmyeet wrote:
| While there is disagreement on the exact definition,
| Wikipedia sums it up pretty well [1]:
|
| > 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_conspira
| cy_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...
| eli_gottlieb wrote:
| >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.
|
| 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.
| maxglute wrote:
| Bingo
|
| > 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.
| Hilift wrote:
| No government lowers housing prices. Additionally real estate
| rarely drops in price unless there is a major economic
| downturn. It isn't going to happen.
| jlos wrote:
| As a close watcher of Canadian politics, here's the best summary
| I can offer for those not familiar:
|
| _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.
| adverbly wrote:
| It's crazy how many of your points are related to housing, and
| how many of them would be fixed or at least massively improved
| by a land value tax.
| 3vidence wrote:
| Really appreciate the summary! As a Canadian these things feel
| very obvious but since most of this site is from the US this
| should help the conversation a lot.
| type0 wrote:
| So now Elon can become the governor of the 51st State
| btbuildem wrote:
| Can we PLEASE keep political posts off HN? Majority of the
| discussion in those contributes approximately nothing, gets
| people worked up, and doesn't seem to have any connection to the
| general mission of, you know, hacking stuff.
| rsanek wrote:
| > Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If
| a story is spam or off-topic, flag it.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| Why did you even click through? The title made it very clear
| this discussion was political. 29/30 of the stories on the HN
| front page are technical, click on those instead.
| SpecialistK wrote:
| So it's all going down now eh? For those not on the pulse of
| CdnPoli, this is a primer I wrote a few weeks ago but is still
| widely relevant:
|
| 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.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > When Parliament returns in March with a new Liberal Party
| leader
|
| 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.
| SpecialistK wrote:
| He's already got prorogation, and that's why I said March and
| not end of this month.
|
| > 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.
| dfdx wrote:
| A friend of mine recently finished his engineering PhD at the
| University of Toronto. He received employment offers from an
| American firm and a Canadian firm. The Canadian firm offered a
| total compensation package worth 80,000 CAD (~55,000 USD); the
| American firm offered him nearly 275,000 USD.
| amarka wrote:
| I can't believe Justin Trudeau would lowball your friend like
| that.
| wg0 wrote:
| ROLF
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I hate the F Trudeau crowd almost as much as I hate Trudeau,
| but
|
| 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.
| seizethecheese wrote:
| People usually blame the country's leader for any and all
| economic issues, whether fairly or not.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| We do, broadly, have a problem in Canada with people
| blaming the federal govt for things that are not under its
| jurisdiction. We have a very federal system, and the
| provinces have a lot of power.
|
| But in this case, yes, I think federal policy is directly
| implicated.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| This was my experience too, scaled back in time to when I
| graduated in 2010 from UBC.
| reverendsteveii wrote:
| Is it me or does it seem like the internet era has taken away
| incumbent advantage and actually put incumbents at a massive
| disadvantage? I'm not here to attack or defend what Trudeau has
| actually done, only to posit the idea that once you become a
| leader in the political landscape there is a very effective
| machine whose only job is to attack you, personally, as much as
| possible anywhere you're perceived to be vulnerable. If you've
| followed US politics for the last decade the perfect example of
| this is "tan suit".
| dfxm12 wrote:
| The machine isn't against the incumbent, it wants to move
| things to the right. This is why Obama gets mainstream media
| outrage for superficial things like wearing a tan suit. Also it
| is why Biden (correctly) got a lot of negative coverage for
| being too old to serve but people like Trump or Kay Ivey
| relatively get a pass.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| The right also had incumbent disadvantage this year. See:
|
| - 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.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| It's an interesting theory, but there are other hypotheses out
| there. One I've heard a lot is that the post-pandemic inflation
| surge hit everyone, and made all incumbents unpopular. I
| suppose that if the anti-incumbent results across the globe
| continue for several more years, we will be able to rule that
| out?
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Inflation, distrust of authorities after COVID, deliberate
| (and automated) spread of disinformation, outright war in
| Europe, climate change becoming increasingly obvious with
| nobody doing anything about it (but people very angry any
| time somebody attempts to do something about it... etc)
|
| It's not a fun time, and I'd hate to be "in charge"
| Pet_Ant wrote:
| I assume "tan suit" is referring to:
|
| 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.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Might depend on your age? Were you politically active in the
| Obama period? Even as a Canadian I heard about this.
|
| 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.
| loceng wrote:
| Indeed, Trudeau had the whole state-funded media to use as his
| propaganda apparatus on his side - and it's why free speech is
| under threat trying in Canada and elsewhere, them trying to
| manufacture consent by so-called "hate speech" for the fascists
| to gain more control to censor-suppress dissidents who see what
| they really are.
| dismalaf wrote:
| If people can't understand why this is happening, understand that
| Trudeau has been in power for 9 years and basically everything is
| worse than when he started. And if you want to say, "Blah blah
| it's happening in other countries", don't bother. We're becoming
| poorer when compared to all our peer countries.
|
| 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...
| dang wrote:
| We changed the URL from
| https://www.bbc.com/news/live/clyjmy7vl64t. Interested readers
| might want to look at both.
| CrzyLngPwd wrote:
| The Zelensky curse strikes again.
| dang wrote:
| All: if you're going to post in this thread, please make sure
| you're up-to-date on the site guidelines and that you're
| following them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
| That means erring on the side of following them, since they're
| easy to break unintentionally.
|
| 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.
| eruci wrote:
| We should have been given the choice to properly send him off in
| a general election.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| We kind of did, twice, and he failed to get the message.
|
| 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.
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