Canada General Discussion (2019-)

[brucejoel99]

So the Greens are gonna win in PEI?

Probably yes.

Evidently no.

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/BoyerMichel/status/1229189542143459330

Lol what do people expect Trudeau to do here? Marc Miller, who's better qualified than Trudeau to deal with this, is currently meeting with the Mohawk protesters. This is why he has a Cabinet.

[brucejoel99]

It has Ontario provincial voting intentions: Liberal 40, Conservative 31.5% , NDP 18%

Del Duca surge?

[brucejoel99]

So Trudeau is banning these weapons why exactly? They weren't the type of gun used in the shooting.

It was in the Liberals' election platform & has been in the works for years, so it's not really a response to the recent shootings per se; it was moreso just accelerated due to recent events, if that makes sense.

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/poitrasCBC/status/1295414292414595075

Snap elections are risky even in the best of times. The pandemic only adds much more uncertainty. If there's an outbreak during this campaign, Higgs is gonna be screwed, & especially so if it's linked to campaign activities.

[brucejoel99]

Morneau is holding a presser in 10 minutes in the room usually used by opposition parties and Dr. Tam. We all know what this means.

For us Americans who don't follow Canadian politics on a day-to-day basis, what does it mean?

[brucejoel99]

RIP https://twitter.com/DuaneBratt/status/1307375189601050624

I don't mean for this to sound at all callous, but it's really amazing that Canada hadn't seen a former PM pass away since 2000: 20 years ago! With the recent news of Chretien's wife passing away too, it feels like the near future will see Canada lose quite a few historic policy-makers, & that's really unfortunate.

RIP, Prime Minister.

[brucejoel99]

Two candidates so far are more or less confirmed in the NS Liberal leadership race:

1) Laurie Graham, Chief of Staff to the Premier

2) Kelly Regan, Minister of Community Services, MLA for Bedford, and wife of former federal cabinet minister, Speaker, and current MP for Halifax West, Geoff Regan.

Several cabinet ministers are also mulling a run.

Both the NS Liberal leadership candidates I listed have declined to run, after all but announcing their bids. Kelly Regan was even doing press releases from "Kelly Regan Campaign".

It's a very weird race. The winner automatically becomes Premier and the government has a lead in the polls. The deadline to run is a couple weeks away, yet we still have no declared candidates, and even the remaining speculative candidates haven't made any noises about running.

The three remaining plausible possible leadership candidates are:

Lena Diab, Minister of Immigration, Halifax Armdale
Labi Kousoulis, Minister of Labour, Halifax Citadel-Sable Island
Iain Rankin, Minister of Lands and Forestry, Timberlea-Prospect

Obviously unlikely, but if nobody declares by the deadline, does McNeil just rescind his resignation?

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/BNNBloomberg/status/1344706024108945408

How hard is it to take a year off of an annual vacation to the Caribbean (&, in Phillips' case, his 2nd vacation after an August trip to Switzerland), & lockdown aside, if only for the PR?

[brucejoel99]

Alberta has gotta have the worst provincial government in the country, hands down. I fear what Alberta might look like by 2023, & equally fear the UCP getting back in anyway. Bad times for Albertans.

[brucejoel99]

Trudeau’s Liberals behind or in toss-ups in 13 of 14 rural ridings that reduced them to minority in 2019, say pollsters

A Hill Times article that isn't paywalled?

This is interesting though, despite tons of majority-territory polls for the LPC coming out lately, their vote might be too concentrated in major metro areas, most of which they already hold. There are still enough close major metro seats that are close enough for the LPC to pick up (Aurora, Edmonton Centre, Port Moody, etc) but there's not much real estate there. The Liberals need to get at least some of those rural seats back.

Sloan's riding is a likely pickup though because there's no way he doesn't run as an indy to mess things up for O'Toole. He won't have enough support to win outright, but just enough to split the right and let Mike Bossio (he's the Liberal candidate who unexpectedly won in 2015 and narrowly lost in 2019, is the candidate again) slip back into the seat.

If they're toss-ups right now, then they likely remain in Liberal hands once their campaign machine has started rolling.

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/ColinDMello/status/1383819594968621062?s=20

What's going on here?

It feels like the PC leadership is worried about potentially having a caucus revolt on their hands. There's a significant chunk of the PC base that's seemingly enraged with Ford over all of the new restrictions: formerly big Ford supporters have even taken to calling him a "communist" over them. Not to mention, the PCs aren't exactly working with a super-strong majority to begin with: they require 63 seats to hold down their majority, but they only have 71, so it'd only take 9 of their MPPs to cross the aisle & either sit as independents or even just to threaten their support for a VoNC, which the NDP & Liberals would likely be more than happy with. Their polling numbers have also started to tank over the last week or so, too, if the movement seen in the last few polls is anything to go by.

[brucejoel99]

Although I'm not a Green Party supporter, it is quite disappointing to see that after all the hard work Elizabeth May put in to build the party over the past 15 years, it's being effectively blown apart all in a matter of months since a new leader took over.

Tbf, this is somewhat on May, as she railroaded the leadership candidates in order to hand it to Paul on a silver platter.

[brucejoel99]

How would Rona Ambrose have fared?  She seems to be the great hope for the Conservatives.

https://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/imagine-a-conservative-party-led-by-rona-ambrose-where-would-it-be-now/

I don't get the hype around Ambrose.

Everyone knows that interim leaders are treated with kid gloves. She did a competent job as interim leader, but I'm also old enough to remember having a hard time in some of her cabinet roles. The article rightly suggests she might have an easier time on climate as an Albertan, but it sort of memory-holed the regional question. Much of the discussion in the run up to O'Toole's victory was that the party was dominated by Westerners and needed someone from another region to change that perception. Ambrose would certainly fail on that front.

The case for Rona has a strong grass is always greener vibe. The last paragraph in the article put it well

“You look at what would Rona Ambrose look like having gone through a bruising leadership battle—because it’s not as though people would have stepped aside and given her the job—and what would she look like on the receiving end of Liberal attacks and all that kind of stuff that comes to an opposition leader,” he says. “There’s a lot of punches you’ve got to take between where she was and where she would be today if she was in the job today, and it’s hard to know what you would look like on the other side of that, even if you’re the best candidate out there.”

Although I suppose that there's nevertheless still a case to be made for having Ambrose as leader in that - for whatever reason - she just seemingly commands more respect & admiration among both the rank-&-file & party insiders in a way that Scheer & O'Toole never have. While she obviously would've faced the same challenges insofar as reconciling the stark contrast between the ascendant populist right-wing & the need for a viable party capable of governing is concerned, she at least could've arguably done so with the aid of a more unified base of support & respect than anybody else could hope for.

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/CanadianPolling/status/1404863944079155203

Pure self-immolation at this point.

[brucejoel99]

Rachel Notley must be the happiest woman alive.

[brucejoel99]

Rachel Notley must be the happiest woman alive.

She would be happier with Kenney still in office. With the most unpopular premier in Canada gone and a new one coming in, there is the potential for UCP  recovery with a change of image.

I think Notley was the favourite against Kenney since his caucus (and party membership, evidently) was bound to revolt, but I wouldn't be quite so fast to annoint her even if a Wildroser is due to be Kenney's replacement. I'm hardly well versed in Alberta politics but surely the UCP has somebody competent enough to hold their coalition together?

I see the conditions for the NDP sweeping Calgary/Edmonton as present no matter what happens in the UCP leadership race since, whoever wins, be it Jean, Danielle Smith, etc., is guaranteed to be to Kenney's right, a fact which is just gonna give Notley even more room to appeal to swing voters in general &, really, 2008 Alberta Liberal-2012 PC-2015 NDP-2019 non-NDP voters in particular; polling already shows the NDP leading in Calgary, the Kingmaker of Alberta, no matter the UCP leader.

[brucejoel99]

I see the conditions for the NDP sweeping Calgary/Edmonton as present no matter what happens in the UCP leadership race since, whoever wins, be it Jean, Danielle Smith, etc., is guaranteed to be to Kenney's right, a fact which is just gonna give Notley even more room to appeal to swing voters in general &, really, 2008 Alberta Liberal-2012 PC-2015 NDP-2019 non-NDP voters in particular; polling already shows the NDP leading in Calgary, the Kingmaker of Alberta, no matter the UCP leader.

The urban/rural gap is growing in Alberta.  Calgary isn't really the "Cowtown" or bastion of reactionary suburban conservatism it was a generation ago.

And both Jean (Fort McMurray) and Smith (High River) are from ''rural'' areas.

The UCP line a year from now: "Rachel Notley personally burned down Brian Jean's home."

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/j_mcelroy/status/1541883359327969280

An understandable decision; one that's obviously sad to hear about, but his health must come first. Now, your go, BCNDP...

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/CBCNews/status/1703852363419697613

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/Gray_Mackenzie/status/1703864704152506659

[brucejoel99]

https://twitter.com/addammy1/status/1768778545898176888https://twitter.com/MarcLevesqueEco/status/1769018783203561707
Ofc, Poilievre wants people to ignore the French & believe that he really did say boring:

https://twitter.com/PierrePoilievre/status/1769060762549440782