Canada General Discussion (2019-)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In other news, the twitter account of the leader of Canada's third largest party is no longer visible in India as part of the government's latest crackdown on the Khalistan movement.

[oldtimer]

I hate our entire system.  The NDP will break soon and we'll get a no confidence vote, another election, and another liberal minority now with the added uncertainty of Chinese interference.  There's really nothing preventing Trudeau from running indefinitely.  No term limits or way to impeach.  67% of Canadians who voted did not back our PM in 2021. It's frustrating.

Could be a description of Stephen Harper or any non-american western leader:

Voters wanted to get rid of him for years, they just couldn't make up their minds which opposition party to vote for, until they really got desperate.

But it will happen.

[Hatman 🍁]

I hate our entire system.  The NDP will break soon and we'll get a no confidence vote, another election, and another liberal minority now with the added uncertainty of Chinese interference.  There's really nothing preventing Trudeau from running indefinitely.  No term limits or way to impeach.  67% of Canadians who voted did not back our PM in 2021. It's frustrating.

A significant proportion of that 67% would prefer Trudeau over Poilievre.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

I hate our entire system.  The NDP will break soon and we'll get a no confidence vote, another election, and another liberal minority now with the added uncertainty of Chinese interference.  There's really nothing preventing Trudeau from running indefinitely.  No term limits or way to impeach.  67% of Canadians who voted did not back our PM in 2021. It's frustrating.

A significant proportion of that 67% would prefer Trudeau over Poilievre.

Both come from the wormy, smarmy, disingenuous, pretentious Ted Cruz tradition, so honestly we’re in bad shape either way. I’ll meaninglessly throw my vote to the NDP again, even though they insist on keeping a leader who should’ve got the boot two losses ago.

I remember when Jack Layton was running to be Prime Minister. In 2011, before he got sick, it really did seem like he could finally be our guy in the next cycle. That is not going to happen for Singh.

[CumbrianLefty]

Genuine question - how is Singh still there?

The NDP's result last time was underwhelming on any reasonably objective criteria.

[Хahar 🤔]

Genuine question - how is Singh still there?

The NDP's result last time was underwhelming on any reasonably objective criteria.

The simple answer is that he has never stopped successfully doing what he was selected to do, which is to make NDP members feel good about themselves for having a leader like him.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

Genuine question - how is Singh still there?

The NDP's result last time was underwhelming on any reasonably objective criteria.

The simple answer is that he has never stopped successfully doing what he was selected to do, which is to make NDP members feel good about themselves for having a leader like him.

Exactly.

[Hatman 🍁]

For a more serious answer, in 2019 the party was looking like it was going to get wiped off the map, and he had a strong debate performance which saved the party. This was seen as a good thing, so he was kept. In 2021, while the result was underwhelming, it still resulted in a net seat gain. So, might as well keep him around. The NDP does not have a tradition of turfing its leaders after every election. You will note that most NDP leaders stick around as long as they make gains, even modest ones. And does Singh even have a natural successor? Charlie Angus, maybe...

[oldtimer]

I hate our entire system.  The NDP will break soon and we'll get a no confidence vote, another election, and another liberal minority now with the added uncertainty of Chinese interference.  There's really nothing preventing Trudeau from running indefinitely.  No term limits or way to impeach.  67% of Canadians who voted did not back our PM in 2021. It's frustrating.

A significant proportion of that 67% would prefer Trudeau over Poilievre.

Both come from the wormy, smarmy, disingenuous, pretentious Ted Cruz tradition, so honestly we’re in bad shape either way. I’ll meaninglessly throw my vote to the NDP again, even though they insist on keeping a leader who should’ve got the boot two losses ago.

I remember when Jack Layton was running to be Prime Minister. In 2011, before he got sick, it really did seem like he could finally be our guy in the next cycle. That is not going to happen for Singh.

Jack Layton dying was a tragedy, he was one of the few I genuinely respected and liked.
He made his cane a symbol of strength.

[HagridOfTheDeep]

I hate our entire system.  The NDP will break soon and we'll get a no confidence vote, another election, and another liberal minority now with the added uncertainty of Chinese interference.  There's really nothing preventing Trudeau from running indefinitely.  No term limits or way to impeach.  67% of Canadians who voted did not back our PM in 2021. It's frustrating.

A significant proportion of that 67% would prefer Trudeau over Poilievre.

Both come from the wormy, smarmy, disingenuous, pretentious Ted Cruz tradition, so honestly we’re in bad shape either way. I’ll meaninglessly throw my vote to the NDP again, even though they insist on keeping a leader who should’ve got the boot two losses ago.

I remember when Jack Layton was running to be Prime Minister. In 2011, before he got sick, it really did seem like he could finally be our guy in the next cycle. That is not going to happen for Singh.

Jack Layton dying was a tragedy, he was one of the few I genuinely respected and liked.
He made his cane a symbol of strength.

It was also a tragedy because he honestly could have won. There was a real sense that the Liberal Party could die, at least for a bit. It was a nice feeling.

Regarding why he has been allowed to stay on… I can’t say. I guess he “saved the campaign” in 2019, but as far as I can remember, half the reason they were down so embarrassingly low was because his rollout as leader had been a huge flop. He was not in the House of Commons, he was making weird comments about extremists… he had the stink of failure on him before he even started. He’s pretty clearly a lightweight on the policy side and, like it or not, isn’t ever going to receive the votes of a pretty large number of Canadians simply because of his faith. It’s not “nice,” but you sort of have to win to play.

[Meclazine for Israel]

Vancouver man, Paul Stanley Schmidt, 37, stabbed to death outside Starbucks in Vancouver.

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/father-stabbed-to-death-outside-vancouver-starbucks-a-great-guy

Police will allege that Paul was stabbed to death by Inderdeep Singh Gosal, 32.


Gosal was arrested at the scene and has been charged with second-degree murder

The two men got into an altercation after Paul asked Inderdeep not to vape in front of his wife and 3 year old child. The killing was captured in a gruesome video that has been widely viewed on social media.

The video is still on Twitter but far too graphic to post on this forum. Gun and shooting videos from a distance don't bother me, but there is something very discomforting about footage of a stabbing with lots of blood.

I recommend you don't watch it.

[Sol]

I recommend you don't watch it.

Why do you always post this sort of crap then? It just seems like most of your posts are designed to racistly scaremonger about crime.

[CumbrianLefty]

Yeah, have there really been no white people killing others in Canada recently?

[EastAnglianLefty]

I recommend you don't watch it.

Why do you always post this sort of crap then? It just seems like most of your posts are designed to racistly scaremonger about crime.

Sometimes, the reason is the obvious one.

[Upper Canada Tory]

The budget released by the Liberals on Tuesday throws any notion of fiscal restraint out the window. The deficit is set to be $40 billion, $10 billion more than projected in their so-called 'economic snapshot' last fall. Some economists are apparently warning that the deficit may even be larger than that if economic growth is more sluggish than expected or if tax revenue from tax hikes fails to materialize.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-canada-federal-budget-2023/

This is note, on top of that, the cost of financing the debt is expected to more than double from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic to the 2026 budget (it will be nearly $50 billion by then, which would be larger than our deficit). The federal government is now borrowing large sums of money with the highest interest rate since November 2007.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-federal-debt-costs-to-exceed-40-billion-a-year-by-2025-26-pbos-pre/

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Genuine question - how is Singh still there?

The NDP's result last time was underwhelming on any reasonably objective criteria.

I've been thinking about this quite a bit lately. Bear in mind I'm far from an NDP supporter, so I'm looking at this from the outside too.

I do agree with what Xahar said to an extent, Singh is kind of a "feel good" leader more than anything else, because his political chops are sorely lacking. 90% of the guy's speeches sound like a record of "Bernie Sanders Greatest Hits", which is probably a good tactic for the NDP to be fair...except it's delivered by a man with nowhere near the level of Sanders' oratory skills, so it feels kind of amateurish. But NDPers like Singh, and he's a true believer. It wasn't that long ago that left-wing activists in Canada were stumping for a leader who used to serve in a centre-right government, a position in which he, among other things, praised a certain leftist icon named Margaret Thatcher (can't make this stuff up lmao). With Singh, they know he's one of their own, so it's easier to be loyal to him.

Now here's the thing - although Singh has failed to deliver on seat count, he's gotten lucky. During his leadership, the Liberals have been stuck in a minority position where the NDP's 24-25 votes have been crucial to getting anything done. Yes, Singh took the NDP from 44 seats to 24, but the way things broke down, the NDP became more powerful with fewer seats. Then the Liberals offered a confidence-and-supply deal with the NDP. Again, it's hard to believe but in theory, right now is the most power that the NDP has ever had in a Canadian federal government. Sure, Layton won them 100+ seats, yet the NDP had zero influence on government, which was then a Conservative majority. Now, despite having only a quarter of the seats they had 10 years ago, they've managed to get the government to sign a formal agreement and deliver a dental care program. Rollout has been slow and frankly unimpressive, but for what it's worth, this is the biggest expansion of Canadian public healthcare coverage in decades.

That's the NDP's preferred narrative anyway - that the Liberals are lost without them and are desperate to keep them happy, and therefore are caving into NDP priorities. But dental care and a few other changes around the edges is all they're really giving the NDP. What seems more likely to me is that the Liberals are in a much more powerful position. They're throwing bones at the NDP to keep them loyal without giving them an actual voice in the executive branch. And the bones the Liberals are throwing at them are basically the most uncontroversial things that most Liberals support anyway. They're not cancelling fossil fuel projects, they're not canceling fossil fuel subsidies, not nationalizing anything, not implementing windfall or wealth taxes, not raising corporate taxes, and not even sniffing in the direction of electoral reform, all NDP priorities. You'd think if Singh really had Trudeau by the balls, he could press a little harder on the big-ticket NDP items that the Liberals wouldn't normally entertain at all. Either Singh is underplaying his hand, or he really doesn't have as much power as he tells his party faithful.

All in all, the NDP seems to have no strategy to break out as a serious alternative to the Liberals and Conservatives. Singh's playing it safe, getting just enough wins that he can tell his party faithful that he's getting them big wins, but largely irrelevant to non-NDP supporters. A generous interpretation would tell you that he doesn't want to betray left-wing voters by forcing an early election that could lead to a Poilievre government and is siding with what most NDPers see as the lesser of two evils (and polls show that a majority of NDP supporters are in favour of the agreement). A cynical interpretation would tell you that his pension doesn't kick in until February 2025, so he doesn't want to risk defeat, given that his personal margin of victory in Burnaby South is a bit close for comfort. Both may be factors, but I think Singh is really insecure about the NDP's position and wants to prolong the little power they have for as long as possible. That's no way to build a serious party.

[Hash]

https://twitter.com/FP_Champagne/status/1641781781912231938

The latest wisdom from our beautiful Liberal government: less competition and a merger is actually more competition. You wouldn't understand, you're too stupid to understand, the Liberal Party knows what's good for you.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

https://twitter.com/FP_Champagne/status/1641781781912231938
The latest wisdom from our beautiful Liberal government: less competition and a merger is actually more competition. You wouldn't understand, you're too stupid to understand, the Liberal Party knows what's good for you.

Oligopoly is a serious problem in Canada, I just hope Canadians get serious about it some day. Part of it is just the difficulty of setting up infrastructure in such a vast and thinly populated country, at least when it comes to telco. Regardless, this is bad news for all Canadian consumers and the overall health of our long-term economic outlook.

But spinning a major corporate merger into "improved competitiveness", that's the kind of audacity we can only expect from our beloved natural governing party.

[Hatman 🍁]

Man, the NDP would double its seat totals if it ran a campaign primarily focused on breaking up the telecoms.

[Benjamin Frank]

https://twitter.com/FP_Champagne/status/1641781781912231938
The latest wisdom from our beautiful Liberal government: less competition and a merger is actually more competition. You wouldn't understand, you're too stupid to understand, the Liberal Party knows what's good for you.

Yes and no. The reality is Shaw was something of a flailing company. Its main revenue comes from desktop internet and cable, both of which are slowly declining or flat. Shaw had largely orphaned its Freedom/Shaw wireless. There was a small increase in Freedom/Shaw wireless subscribers, but the main increase in revenue seemed to come from burner phones. Shaw had also given up on its 'Netflix' type service shortly after rolling it out.

In terms of competition with Rogers, Shaw and Rogers several years ago worked out essentially a noncompete agreement in cable and internet where Shaw took all of Rogers western Subscribers and Rogers got most of Ontario and Eastern Canada. I believe only in parts of Ontario did Rogers and Shaw continue to compete with each other.

In terms of Wireless, Shaw selling Freedom/Shaw and all that goes with it to Videotron (a subsidiary of Quebecor) along with the guarantees Videotron gave the federal government in terms of setting up a fourth major wireless carrier will hopefully provide a significant increase in wireless competition.

Shaw is (or soon will have been) a publicly traded company, so its financial statements are available on the internet: https://www.shaw.ca/corporate/investor-relations/financial-reports

For instance, from the financial statements on burner phones: In the first quarter, the Company added approximately 13,800 new Wireless customers, consisting primarily of 12,300 prepaid customers.

I'm not totally sure that all prepaid phones are burner phones.

[Pericles]

Genuine question - how is Singh still there?

The NDP's result last time was underwhelming on any reasonably objective criteria.

The NDP are doing about as well as they usually do historically, maybe a bit better. Most of their losses were in Quebec in 2019 anyway, they have held up better in the rest of Canada. It's plausible that they have underperformed in the context of the last two elections, but not disastrously. Parties tend not to change leaders without a clear need for it, even if there is a chance they would do better.

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

Parties tend not to change leaders without a clear need for it, even if there is a chance they would do better.

The federal NDP in particular is very lenient with their leaders. In their 91 year history, the NDP (including the CCF) has only had two one-election leaders: Audrey McLaughlin who led them to a historically bad performance, and Tom Mulcair who had uniquely high expectations for an NDP leader, and had little appeal to many longtime NDP faithful

[MaxQue]

Man, the NDP would double its seat totals if it ran a campaign primarily focused on breaking up the telecoms.

It wouldn't because it would torn apart by TV channels (who are owned by said telecoms).

[RFK 2024]

Ontario's election watchdog wants opinion polls banned in run-up to voting day

In the wake of record-low turnout for an Ontario election, the province's chief electoral officer is calling for a ban on publishing the results of political polls for the final stretch of the campaign.

The recommendation is one of many in a new post-election report from Elections Ontario.

Under the heading "a call for legislative change," the report recommends disallowing published reports of political polls two weeks in advance of election day

"Political polls have the potential to influence election results," says the report. "The Chief Electoral Officer recommends that no public opinion polling results stating political party favourability ratings be published in the final two weeks before election day."

Link to full article

I don't think I need to explain why this is a bad idea...

[RFK 2024]

Vancouver man, Paul Stanley Schmidt, 37, stabbed to death outside Starbucks in Vancouver.

Some moron posted a video of himself on TikTok at the crime scene, with the man's body in the background.  Other people were just filming it on their cameras. I swear to God people are losing touch with reality more and more by the day.  Canada, the "friendly" country.  What a f**king joke.  SMH.