Canada General Discussion (2019-)

[2952-0-0]

Yeah. I mean it's only 125k people in a country of nearly 40 million, so there's still room for an attack if America and the UK are getting back to normal and we aren't, but they really should have approached the attack differently...

Honestly though, O'Toole ought to be hoping the vaccine rollout comes quickly, if only so we can get out of COVID-politics and into a more normal politics where people care about deficits and China again.

Goldman Sachs projects that Canada will have a later start than the US and UK, but is on track to have the highest level of vaccinations of the major first-world economies by May 2021.

https://twitter.com/RobinWigg/status/1332247230259060736

O'Toole will have more pressing things to worry about. The wingnuts in his party are running riot in a way they didn't, even under Scheer.

[2952-0-0]

Yes, which is why O'Toole really ought to be hammering it mext election. It's the rare issue that simultaneously:

a) Atrracts the sort of non-base voter he's going after

b) Keeps the base happy

c) The Liberal government has been very weak on* and is out of touch with most Canadians about

* Foreign policy isn't really somethinng I get passionate about, but to my eyes, it seems the Liberals haven't done the work to protect themselves on China they have on other issues. E.g. Not banning Huawei from 5G like the rest of the Five Eyes.

Additionally, the Liberal brand and corresponding actions are very much tied up in a sort of cosmopolitanism that can seem very naive when facing a geopolitical foe, to say nothing of the awkward comments certain Liberals have made on the issue.

I agree, it's definitely their best line of attack. The only even potential downside that I know of is that maybe it will turn off Chinese immigrants who tend to be quite patriotic about the old country, but I think most of the most heavily Chinese seats are Liberal anyway so it's definitely still a net benefit. What I am curious though is how the line will play in Atlantic Canada. As I'm sure you know first hand, that part of the country is incredibly swingy, and I've never been convinced that the Liberal strength out there is reliable due to that. If it does play well, the Tories could swing a good number of seats and make their lives a lot easier.

What happens with Canada-China relations is driven by factors outside Ottawa's control. Thanks to Xi's horrible foreign policy, he has squandered China's opportunity to seize the world's centre stage, and made enemies out of all the world's wealthy/democratic powers. If the Trump Administration was able to convince the first/democratic world to confront China, then the Biden Administration will for sure be even more successful. That means that Ottawa will get tough on China regardless who is in 24 Sussex (when its renovation is complete).

The "Chinese immigrant" community is very, very diverse. Some immigrants from the mainland might be pro-PRC, but they're not very politically engaged. Some others hate the CCP as much as the famous Cubans in Miami-Dade, but the Chinese opposition-in-exile is as fractured as in that Monty Python skit. The ones from Hong Kong are solid Conservative thanks to it being "tougher on China". The others from Taiwan and Southeast Asia might not rank the PRC highly as a priority. Second-generation Chinese-Canadians are too assimilated to care about the PRC.

China might become an issue, but not a very prominent one. It certainly can't substitute for more day-to-day ones like the economy or health care.

It's emblematic of Canadian politics as a whole. I certainly buy that Chantal Hebert is very concerned about the Tories voting against removing the terminally ill prerequisite for assisted death... I'm not so sure that the blue collar worker we're trying to win over in Thunder Bay or Miramichi is.

Scheer's inability to define himself arguably cost him last year's vote. Much of it was his own awful communication skills and his lack of even trying to appeal in Quebec. But the Liberals looooove to accuse the Conservatives of a hidden agenda, and he was unable to respond.

I agree that so-cons within Parliament aren't too much of a problem for O'Toole. But, his inability or unwillingness to control the wingnuts in his party who tweet conspiracy theories about vaccines and George Soros will at best distract from his messaging. More likely, they will allow the Liberals to smear them as a bunch of far-right Twitter trolls. That's a perfect environment for the Liberals.

[2952-0-0]

First, I question how tough the Liberals will actually get on China even if every Western government including Canada is moving in that direction. Canada is the lone Five Eyes country to not ban Huawei from 5G, and the Aussies have taken tougher anti-Chinese measures than Canada despite being smaller than us and easier for the Chinese to hurt.

Similarly, we had that farcial incident that made the front page of the Globe and Mail this week where Foreign Affairs tried to pressure the military to not cancel joint exercises with the Chinese military, despite the PRC holding two of our citizens hostage. Obviously Trudeau shouldn't be held responsible for every pants-on-head-stupid decision a bureaucrat makes, but that sort of decision doesn't exactly scream that "tough on China" is the tone at the top.

Second, you discussed the effect primarily in terms of the Chinese immigrant community. I'm envisioning pushing this issue being more about moving blue collar white guys, and being tied into O'Toole's new approach on trade, rather than trying to get a Miami-Cuban effect.

The Liberals will most likely "go with the flow" with the other major western economies, while expressing their idiosyncracies. They introduced a special immigration channel open to any Hong Kong youth (and I wouldn't put it past Trudeau to hug the first arrival at YYZ), which was definitely seen by Beijing as a hostile act. They won't be as hostile as Australia, but they definitely won't allow Canada to become a weak link in the Five Eyes or NATO for...what exactly? Canada has seen the sharpest deterioration in public opinion towards China in all the G7 countries.

As for Canada's stance on Huawei's 5G technology, while there was no formal ban, RoBelUs coincidentally announced on the same day that they will not use Huawei in their 5G networks. These announcements had Ottawa's fingerprints all over them. It also means that on the question of Huawei, Canada is in practical terms tougher than the UK, which merely banned installations of new Huawei 5G equipment starting next year. A formal ban on Huawei would likely come long after RoBelUs have started construction using other vendors, and would be just a political theatre for export to the US. The Conservatives know this, which is why they're trying to milk it for all it's worth.

The blue collar voter which O'Toole might target would be more swayed by day-to-day issues like the economy or health care (the two being conflated in our age). China would be worth a few talking points, but it can't substitute for those more day-to-day issues. Even Donald Trump recognized this, and his policy towards China will be his biggest long-term legacy.

O'Toole should be conveying a big picture on how Canada should fare in a post-pandemic world, because voters understand we won't be returning to 2019. Instead, so far we're seeing Harper-style boutique campaign promises without Harper's ability or even willingness to control his party's wingnuts. It's better than Scheer's performance, but the environment will be far better for the Liberals this time.

[2952-0-0]

The UCP has shades of Alison Redford's PC Party, who was also brought down by her jet-setting habit.

It's quite clear that Niki Ashton's trip to Greece was a good excuse to strip her of her critic roles. She's way too far left and had given the party unwanted attention.

[2952-0-0]

There's been some chatter about UCPA rank-and-file forcing a leadership review on Kenney. There will be more than enough time for the party to elect a new leader before 2023.

In other news, Ottawa is considering a demand by the NDP to add "The Proud Boys" onto its list of terrorist organizations.

[2952-0-0]

The media are all fixated on the slow vaccine rollout, and the Conservatives are gleefully making hay over this.

This will bite them in the ass, for the 63452nd time. Within a few months, production capacity will have ramped up, and the (rich) world will be awash with vaccines. Supply will no longer be an issue.

As usual, the Conservatives ridicule Trudeau and lower public expectations towards him, so that when Trudeau greatly exceeds these expectations but still doesn't perform as well as he could, these attacks backfire on them again and again.

[2952-0-0]

The media are all fixated on the slow vaccine rollout, and the Conservatives are gleefully making hay over this.

This will bite them in the ass, for the 63452nd time. Within a few months, production capacity will have ramped up, and the (rich) world will be awash with vaccines. Supply will no longer be an issue.

As usual, the Conservatives ridicule Trudeau and lower public expectations towards him, so that when Trudeau greatly exceeds these expectations but still doesn't perform as well as he could, these attacks backfire on them again and again.

And yet the Conservatives are still stuck in the low 30s.  The Liberals have dropped according to this poll, but the Conservatives haven't budged.

If the Conservatives weren't suffering an identity crisis, and if their staffers weren't Harper leftovers, they could very well be leading now.

Vaccine shipments will be ramping up in the coming weeks, and Trudeau will use every opportunity to promote himself. By the end of March, most Canadians will have known someone who has received the shot.

Michelle Rempel, the MP for Oklahoma, is already shifting the goalposts and claiming that Ottawa is not prepared for the flood of vaccines that it's expecting to receive by the end of March, and Erin O'Toole is pivoting to accusing the Liberals of mishandling the economy.

[2952-0-0]

It seems like Canada is moving a bit toward an American-style "progressive" vs. "conservative" polarization, but less balanced.

To some extent. But, Canada is the only country in the world where everyone - politicians, pundits, voters - is on a conspiracy to separate federal and provincial politics. Don and Mary from Oakville swooned over Justin's hair in 2015, voted for a dollar-store Trump in 2018, and then voted somewhat grudgingly for Trudeau again in 2019. Their alter-egos in Oakland County, Michigan would never think of voting likewise.

The US is so polarized because both parties have an iron-clad floor of 47%, and know that their path to victory requires charging up their own base and convincing a tiny fraction of genuine swing voters. In Canada, the multiple parties at the federal level know that their floor is too low to play this same game, so they must appeal to a much larger segment of swing voters.

Conservatives are increasingly torn between the median voter and their base.  Roughly 55% are consistently Liberal/NDP/Green, 30-35% Conservative.  

I think the Conservatives have had this problem since the founding of the modern party in 2003.

Harper was successful at bridging the median voter and the base because the Liberals were in disarray and the NDP had a charismatic leader, and the Harper minorities were rather uncontroversial, leading to the majority in 2011.

Both Scheer and O'Toole became leader by overtaking the "establishment" candidate through the party's preferential voting system and appealing to the so-con base.

When all three became leader, they quickly moved to silence the most embarrassing wingnuts in the party, betting that the so-cons will still vote for them. Then their path to victory includes firing up the base while dangling some boutique tax cuts for Don and Mary.

Harper succeeded in both, partly thanks to his ruthlessness. Scheer did so well at the former, and so badly at the latter, that he lost while winning the popular vote. O'Toole is firing up the base, but has done nothing to appeal to Don and Mary as of yet.

[2952-0-0]

The Conservatives want us to "meet" Erin O'Toole, telling us he isn't a career politician and neglects to mention that his father was an MPP under Mike Harris.

https://meet.erinotoole.ca/

Abacus says that among Liberal and NDP voters, the approval of their respective party leaders is above 80%.

For O'Toole, it's 62%, and that was comparable to Ignatieff.

https://twitter.com/gtlem/status/1358096491638894592

The more people get to know him, the worse his numbers.

[2952-0-0]

Would Prairies + southern Ontario + (maybe 1/2) of the Atlantic seats be anywhere near enough to reach a majority?

The easiest path for a Conservative majority would be Harper's. A major breakthrough in the GTA well into the City of Toronto, as well as Metro Vancouver, would be required. At least a dozen seats in the Maritimes would need to be won as well.

[2952-0-0]

Weeks after the Conservatives dumped Derek Sloan, a long-time wingnut Cheryl Gallant has been exposed for some online musings about the Great Reset, cultural Marxism, that the (((Liberals))) are pedophiles, that the Liberals are in cahoots with big tech to control the media, and that Trudeau himself spread the coronavirus.

https://twitter.com/MarkGerretsen/status/1363096044343558147

https://twitter.com/JenOConnell_/status/1362824739891392519

https://twitter.com/WaytowichNeil/status/1362929233782259712

[2952-0-0]

We've known about Cheryl Gallant's kookiness for decades now. Nothing new. I know die hard conservatives in her riding who won't even vote for her due to her views. Doesn't stop her from winning easily each time, though it does cost her 10-20% of the vote (compare her pv share with the less controversial John Yakabuski who holds the seat provincially)

True, but the events of the past year have acted as a magnet that dragged their wingnuttery further off the deep end. Increased scrutiny about the far-right created ample fodder for the Liberal oppo research team.

I'm grabbing the popcorn for O'Toole's reaction. It's a lose-lose choice for him.

[2952-0-0]

The Commons is voting on a resolution that declares China's mass internment of Uyghurs as a genocide, and requests relocation of the Winter Olympics for next year.

The Conservatives, Bloc, Greens, and NDP are in favour. Many Liberal MPs have stated they are voting in favour too.

The Cabinet members are no-showing the vote.

[2952-0-0]

Ladies and gentlemen, the Conservative Party's health critic:
https://twitter.com/bruceanderson/status/1365748285256978441

[2952-0-0]

Erin O'Toole's job is safe. But the drip-drip stories of infighting will damage the party's reputation in the eyes of Tom and Susan from Oakville, and hurt the party's ability to do the dirty work of creating policy and communicating with the public.

[2952-0-0]

Liberal and NDP both held conventions this weekend.

This "woke" banker will make a fine candidate for Toronto-St. Paul's, but I don't see him sweeping the country or anything:

https://www.cpac.ca/en/programs/cpac-special/episodes/66359485/

It will be difficult for the Conservatives to attack Mark Carney, when they appointed him to head the Bank of Canada. Someone like him would be good to bolster the Liberals' economic credentials among Tom and Jane from Oakville. He reminds me of Paul Martin, in that he certainly knows his stuff, but he's not tested in retail politics. The Liberals should require him to run in a somewhat competitive seat.

[2952-0-0]

The reason why Doug Ford's last decree was received so terribly was because it was so obviously a show. Giving police emergency stop and search powers served no purpose in actually reducing transmission, but was just a theatre to show he's boss. Meanwhile, real steps like mandating paid sick days and prioritizing vaccines to essential workers have been ignored.

Also, I'm not sure the Washington Post is that qualified to criticize Doug Ford, given the number of outbreaks at workplaces owned by its owner.

[2952-0-0]

https://twitter.com/erinotoole/status/1386027327465967624

https://twitter.com/MarkGerretsen/status/1385951915339616260

[2952-0-0]

Conservative leader Erin O'Toole is calling for everyone to get vaccinated.

Meanwhile, one of his backbench MPs compared the (fake) lockdown to internment camps of Japanese-Canadians during WW2, and spouted the same talking points we hear from right-wing kooks.

It's another example of Erin O'Toole losing control of his party to right-wing nuts. The Liberals absoultely looooove to attack Conservatives as right-wing nuts, and these stories are making their strategists' jobs so much easier.

The Ontario Liberals and NDP didn't call for stricter lockdowns. They called for paid sick leave and proper protections for in-person workers, to prevent workplace outbreaks. Instead, Doug Ford did security theatre and gave police power to stop and question anyone, for any reason (which, if anything, increases virus transmission by creating unnecessary human contact). When the police refused to play along as his Gestapo, he sheepishly walked back. Only now is be buckling and introducing paid sick days, which he had abolished in 2019.

[2952-0-0]

They're not inconsistent. Doug Ford's lockdown was a piece of theatre to show his power, rather than to actually restrict virus transmission. All politicians perform theatre, but this type of theatre is playing with fire.

[2952-0-0]

You don't need to bridge the divide. Just let the PC-equivalent run a center right UK Tory style campaign that runs on a carbon tax and beating down SoCons for those key upper middle class urban/suburban votes while the Reform-equivalent runs with all the policies that let it dominate the Prairies and that (especially recently) provided inroads in postindustrial ex-NDP regions like Essex and Oshawa.

As it stands a single Tory leader is forced to choose between their base and growth, whereas two Tory leaders could get both. If anything being divided is a good thing, since that makes it harder for Trudeau to do his usual trick of painting the Tories as Republicans to alienate centrist suburbanites.

Also, of course Trudeau is at his peak when he's paying a huge portion of the population to stay home. The same trick worked quite a while for Bolsonaro. But the real question is what happens to his popularity when the bill comes due, either in the form of austerity and service cuts when the BoC raises rates or inflation if it doesn't. I've seen zero explanations for how we're going to handle the debt (let alone provincial debt) when real rates aren't negative.

I'm sure Trudeau will capitalize by holding an election sooner rather than later though, ideally by baiting the other parties into forcing it somehow.

The PCs and Reform/Alliance merged *because* the alternative was another decade of Liberal majorities with ~35% of the popular vote. More specifically, the PCs never recovered from the shocks of Mulroney's last years, and were a spent force. It's possible that, given another decade, the Alliance Party could have itself evolved into a big-tent centre-right party, but we'll never know.

There would certainly be room for a moderate, centre-right party. Unfortunately, the First Past The Post system makes it unviable.

Virtually every democratically elected government gave generous cash handouts over the past year. But, if buying voters with their own money was the magic elixir to keep power, then Trump would have won. People want real leadership, or at least the perception of it (admittedly, Trudeau did much better on the latter than the former). The debt will have to be addressed through big tax hikes, which most peer countries are going to introduce in some form in the coming years.

I agree, that Trudeau will find a way to call an election by this Fall, when life has returned to normal and we've enjoyed a Summer of economic exuberance. He'll get away with it, because Erin O'Toole has been suspiciously eager about one for months.

[2952-0-0]

Did we follow the same election? Trump did everything he could to shovel out as much money as possible but he was blocked by the House and Senate. Whenever he did manage to get cheques out his approval increased considerably.

People want money in their pockets and the perception of safety, hence why Cuomo and Legault are (were?) the most popular subnational leaders in the US and Canada despite having literally the worst metrics of their respective countries.

As for tax hikes, if France and Colombia are of any indication people aren't going to take tax hikes very well.

Trump was initially reluctant to support economic shutdowns, but when they became inevitable, he agreed to the generous cash handouts (with his signature on the cheques). That week where he acted somewhat presidentially gave him a bump in his approval rate, before it fell back to its default 40-45%.

As for tax hikes, I was referring to Biden's plan to "soak the rich". The US is so influential that major policy shifts will inevitably be followed across the democratic and even non-democratic world. If Biden is successful, then his policies will be picked up elsewhere.

What is interesting is globally things look pretty good for the right.  Pink tide in full retreat in Latin America.  Social democratic parties in Europe at all time lows and right in power in most European countries and continuing to grow each election cycle.  In Asia, India has seen INC greatly diminished and right growing in many countries.  New Zealand maybe the one that is bucking trend like Canada, but also that could be more due to good COVID management as National was in mid 40s before that so it seems that left wing swing is largely unique to Canada.  Some suggest US, but it seems pretty split down the middle as usual. 

I have stated many times, I believe Canada will emerge as the hub for progressive thinking and country where progressives have greatest electoral success.  In fact Canada may emerge as only and first democracy where conservatives cannot win.

We're globally in a state of flux, but one thing is clear: the Reagan/Thatcher era is over. Economic policy will be more interventionist. Even in dictatorships like China and Russia, this trend has become evident. I don't agree that the right is ascendent globally, but do agree that the successful mainstream conservative parties are pivoting leftwards on economic issues (e.g. UK Tories). Trump did so rhetorically, but his substantive economic policy was little different from the last few Republican presidents. Mainstream centre-left parties that are perceived to be wedded to Blairism suffered the most.

Erin O'Toole somewhat understood this, and did dabble in pivoting towards blue-collar voters. But he lacks credibility in doing so, especially when the Liberals are actually delivering interventionist policy.

[2952-0-0]

There is a market for some cultural conservatism in Canada. Most immigrants come from social environments that are deeply, deeply conservative by western standards. It's the kind that Jason "Curry in a Hurry" Kenney pandered to a decade ago. The Fords also won big. Harper destroyed Kenney's work in 2015, and Doug Ford is just a failure.

My local constituency both has Canada's highest average house price and the highest proportion of Muslims. The Liberal MP is openly gay, and he likes to say that what protects his freedom to live his lifestyle also protects Muslims' freedom to live theirs. The subtext, of course, is that cultural conservatism is wedded to xenophobia, and that damages attempts to build a multiracial conservative coalition.

[2952-0-0]

...or, maybe Trudeau wants to call the election before the six-year threshold, so that the 86 incumbent Liberal MPs would campaign harder??

[2952-0-0]

Saskatchewan was once the stronghold of the CCF and NDP, and now it's the most conservative province.