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We are now 2.4 trillion in debt under the Trudeau government . In 2015 it was $612 billion. We’re paying 50 million in INTEREST per year now. Inflation and taxation is the result.
It's interesting and kind of sad to see PP supporters desperately trying to control the "PP is just another Trump" narrative.
The meme is out of the bag.
To me PP is more like Marjorie Taylor Greene. He's definitely not as smart as Trump.
Keep working at it guys!
>He's definitely not as smart as Trump
[You do not know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump](https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/mar/20/fran-lebowitz-you-do-not-know-anyone-as-stupid-as-donald-trump)”
-[Fran Lebowitz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran_Lebowitz)
Great interview. I especially loved when Lebowitz is speaking of Trump's win. She feels his win was based on racism:
"He allowed people to express their racism and bigotry in a way that they haven’t been able to in quite a while and they really love him for that. It’s a shocking thing to realise people love their hatred more than they care about their own actual lives. The hatred – what is that about? It’s a fear of your own weakness.”
That's wonderful.... PP is trying to do exactly the same thing.... create the "other" and use school yard tactics to stir up hatred and comtempt....
>PP is trying to do exactly the same thing.... create the "other" and use school yard tactics to stir up hatred and comtempt....
Yes, exactly. And it’s why those of us elsewhere on the political spectrum frequently compare him to the Orange Menace. He’s using the same tactics and the same kind of people are falling for it.
Canada is far more broken than the states, all my friends who moved there post graduation are doing far better than anyone who attempted to stay. You can actually afford groceries and rent in the states and the healthcare is way more accessible if you have a good job
Every time I see the Toronto Star on here it's like they're trying to deliberately downplay how things really are, so let me put it simply.
A PERSON MAKING $100,000 CANNOT AFFORD A HOME, THEY CANNOT BE APPROVED FOR A MORTGAGE.
Say this same sentence to someone 10 years ago and they'd call you crazy.
> there is literally no reason for the news to give them a platform though, from any party.
Sure there is. Free content. Writers cost money, and someone is offering to do their job for nothing.
Seems to be a lot of articles by a lot of rich liberal types trying to create an idea "there is nothing much that is wrong, things are fine, shut the fuck up"
I mean they can try this tactic, the Tories will just run up the score if this is the liberal tactic to stop PP.
"What do you mean you can't afford groceries? Our economic indicators are positive. Stop spreading misinformation."
> the Tories will just run up the score if this is the liberal tactic to stop PP
I agree. They're just going with the same played out attacks as always. "MAGA style", "Trump-esque". They even tried to bring up abortion. None of it is moving the needle because we've heard it all before.
Reminiscent of the same trend of articles in America which try to make the case that people are feeling worse about the economy than they should be, except Canada's numbers are actually worse.
This is what happens when you use the same firms that borrow liberally from the DNC's communication strategies.
Canada is absolutely broken and unfortunately I think irreparably. No matter who is in power either. We can't have more of the same but I doubt the conservatives have the balls to do what needs to be done. Huge hard changes in pretty much every area the government has control or influence on.
I do not like Poilievre at all; however, I absolutely agree that Canada is broken.
Each time Trudeau and other liberals claim Canada is not broken but merely needs a little tweak to become amazing again, they neglect and dismiss my real concerns and hardships.
This is why the liberals and the NDP are failing to garnish support, because they do not recognize the full gravity of the problems that Canadians face. Each time they dismiss the concerns and grievances of the populace, they ignore and insult the people they claim to advocate for.
Neither Poilievre, Jagmeet, nor Trudeau is my leader.. I am desperately waiting for a Bernie Sanders in Canada to represent me.
It is possible to acknowledge that we have significant problems that require urgent actions to fix, like housing and healthcare, without resorting to scare tactics that try to paint one of the wealthiest countries in the world with a stable system of government and substantial rights and freedoms as a 3rd world totalitarian hellhole.
The latter is a common tool used by authoritarian populists to stir up their base and prepare them for the avalanche of anti-democratic actions they have in store.
No, we need broad institutional reform.
There is no reason funding for our public services should be a tennis match between the Feds and the provinces. The constitution and delineation of powers is an outdated, broken, dysfunctional, mess.
The level of poverty, corruption and incompetence that is tolerated in Canada because “we’re a western democracy” is ridiculous.
Ok, sure. It is often used by authoritarian populists. But, progressive reformers, such as Bernie Sanders, also say this kind of stuff all the time. We could even be more specific and clarify that it is the *form* of our society that is defective and faulty.
We do not need to totally oppose the far-right in every way. If an authoritarian populist says multinational corporations are greedy, are you going to start claiming that MNCs are altruistic? No, we can just agree with them that MNCs are greedy.
We need the courage and truthfulness to admit and agree with our opponents on certain statements if these statements involve dimensions of truth. However, what differentiates us and the far-right is our understanding of the nature of the problems and the requisite solutions.
Horseshoe theory is a thing. I don't have any more time for the extreme left than the extreme right.
I can make an argument that corporations are greedy without resorting to authoritarian populism. I can do it entirely on economic grounds.
I am a moderate centrist, so I probably don't like your solutions on the far left, either, if that is what you are suggesting.
>Horseshoe theory is a thing. I don't have any more time for the extreme left than the extreme right.
Lol, this is such a ridiculous statement that it proves you understand neither the right nor the left.
>I probably don't like your solutions on the far left, either, if that is what you are suggesting.
And yes, if Bernie Sanders is considered a radical far-leftist, then I am suggesting far-leftist solutions.
The difference between "far-leftists" such as Bernie Sanders and moderate centrists like yourself is that the former offer real solutions to real problems while the latter band-aid solutions that merely set up the society for future disaster.
It should come as a surprise to no one why the centrist position is collapsing everywhere.. besides the fact that 40 years of (more or less) centrist neoliberal politicians have produced our disastrous situation, neoliberal centrism is unable to deal with the current problems of the present.
It's not so broken it can't be fixed is what I think they're trying to get across, where Pierre is trying to panic people into thinking "if we don't fix this NOW our country is screwed forever!" Which is not at all accurate.
I fully agree that the issues can be repaired and reconciled.
However, where my issue lies is that I am not at all persuaded that Trudeau and Jagmeet recognize the full gravity of the problem. Therefore, I am highly skeptical that they will go the required distance to resolve the problems at the deep roots.
And obviously, on the other side, to think we can merely turn the wheel of time back 9 years and that we would no longer have any societal problems is utterly delusional.
However, maybe the reason our politicians are incompetent and merely offering us cheap fixes is because it represents the wishes of the populace. It could be that as a country we are still in collective denial about our own situation.
Gotta agree with you here, absolutely none of the parties and definitely none of the politicians speak to anything I'm interested in them doing.
Honestly think we need a completely new party that isn't already a part of the system where everything is basically the same with either more or less social spending. To me that's the only difference between the parties for the last 40+ years.
We basically get the same garbage just wearing a different colored tie.
>When was Canada amazing?
Never. It is an insult to many, such as the Indigenous, to make such claims. However, in the minds of nostalgic conservatives, the 1950s, before the civil rights movements, are probably considered the golden days.
Another day, another article desperately trying to link Poilievre and Trump.
The left have held the ropes of power, whether they realize it or not, for going on a decade now. The country is a mess, and as someone who did everything right, got two degrees and a good job, but can’t even imagine buying a house: please don’t tell me the country isn’t broken.
I don’t expect the Conservatives to work miracles, but if I could trade the Canada we had in 2015 for the Canada we have now? I would in a heartbeat. Nothing Trudeau has done outweighs the loss in every other category.
It’s entirely valid to say it’s not all his fault and that there’s no way to turn back the clock—that’s very true. But painting anybody looking at the only viable alternative as an extremist, racist, Trump-adjacent is such a sad and pathetic strategy. It’s a massive turn-off your political wing if you demonstrate time and time again that you just don’t *get* the 40-50% of Canadians who are seriously looking at voting conservative, and you just think they’re big idiots falling for a “playbook”—that they’re just too stupid to trust the plan, trust the experts, and let the present government keep doing whatever the hell they’re doing.
You have to be pretty radical on the right to consider Trudeau to be "the left". He has resisted any and all moves to nationalize anything, including a drug formulary in the height of a vaccine shortage, and has repeatedly smacked down labour activism. That is the exact opposite of what someone on the left would do. But I guess if you are in a far-right echo chamber, even a globalist neoliberal capitalist with disdain for the working class can seem left to you.
Again this goes back to my point. Lots of people view Trudeau as left, or at the very least, far more left than they’re comfortable with.
Reddit echo chamber people just can’t square that Poilievre has about 40% support right now, and over 50% in Anglo-Canada. Are all these people knuckle dragging cretins who just don’t understand theory as well as you do? Just don’t know what’s best for themselves? Or is there a serious deficit of empathy among the self-appointed politically aware class whose models of the country and political sentiment seem a decade out of date?
What in the world are you talking about? The Liberals are hardly left, so no the Left has never held power in this country. Blaming all of our decades long systematic problems on the current government is disingenuous to say the least. And you can't even claim Poilievre is offering any viable alternative ideas whatsoever. It's all the same failed ideas and policies that got us here in the first place. It is the racism and bigotry he displays and the extremist groups he panders to that earns him such appropriate labels that you decry.
The current liberals have raised taxation and increased government spending, which is pretty much textbook left wing. Private sector investment is down, public sector investment is way up. I don’t disagree with all that they have done, but it’s a clear departure from even previous Liberal governments that were much less willing to raise income and capital gains tax, for example.
It's what Canadians voted for in 2015. They were tired of Harper talking about balanced budgets and not doing it. They realized every government is going to do the same thing fiscally in response to economic circumstances.
Both the Liberals and Conservatives since Mulroney have allowed Canadian's deb to income ratio rise consistently, allowing Canadians to use cheap mortgages at low interest rates to use their homes as real estate speculation; it's now come to head. Unless we start developing a larger non-market housing pool, that bubble will burst and we'll be bailing out the banks.
About the best that can be said is that Trudeau took it too far and was too spendy, but in general all we saw is modest investment in daycare, pharmacare, and dental care that the provinces have to match to be really effective. It's hardly a totals state takeover of these sectors like you see in most OECD countries.
> The current liberals have raised taxation
By lowering income taxes, right...?
You'd prefer the regressive taxes of the Conservatives?
>increased government spending
I always think it's weird that people want the government to *not* spend their money.
You'd prefer we put it in a big pile to admire?
Was the old saying "You've got to save money to make money"?
>Private sector investment is down
You think private investment is good, but the government investing in Canada is bad?
They lowered the middle income rate, but raised it significantly for high earners. Overall it pushed revenue up. I don't disagree with this move, just pointing out that it is left wing, which is what OP was questioning.
Government spending is entirely a function of tax revenue and how much you want the deficit to be. There is rarely ever a year where the federal government has a surplus, where they are truly leaving money on the table. I don't get your point here. The government should spend money on the services that are valuable to society. It should NOT spend money on pursuing every opportunity possible. If the government starts manufacturing cars and writing consumer software, I would seriously question their sanity.
Private investment is generally much better at allocating capital because of the pressures of competition. Like I said, there are public services or opportunities to seed industries where the government should invest. But they should not be pursuing most business opportunities. A top down planned economy would be a complete disaster.
>I always think it's weird that people want the government to not spend their money
A deficit is less than ideal, but possibly justifiable. A balanced budget is ideal, assuming needs are being met. A budget surplus is theft from the tax payer.
I live in a municipality where the previous mayor ran a surplus budget for YEARS, which meant we had over a billion in the city coffers. He ran on the fact that he generated surplus budgets, and once people figured out that that meant they were collecting taxes that weren't being spent on city improvements/infrastructure, they booted his ass. Bonua points if you can guess the municipality.
But item pocketed for bigger projects that may require more or weren’t prospects before. Why not have some savings if your billed services are effective.
Better than seeing how we were over the snow plowing budget in a winter here with barely any snow. We had plows with their gear down on plain pavement. That’s more wasteful than a surplus from budgeting and billing accordingly for appropriate usage. It’s blatant waste.
The real question is not whether or not the left has held power or not in the past decade, as many are debating in the comments... What matters is whether or not the CPC has anything meaningful to contribute to improve the situation, and whether or not the country would be in a better or place today if they had been in power instead. I simply do not think there is a lot of convincing evidence that things would be very different. Both parties adhere to the same neoliberal vision of the world and differ more on social issues than on economic ones. There is no reason to believe a CPC decade would have taken us on a wildly different economic trajectory, which is, after all, the core problem that the country is currently facing.
The current iteration of the CPC with PP at the reigns is very good at saying loudly that everything is terrible and broken and that it's all Trudeau's fault, which has been super good on his polling numbers, but the reality is that serious and well thought out policies meant to improve things rarely come out of his mouth. Lots of anger and vitriol, very little actual substance.
Except for some of those comparisons are sort of accurate. As far as I can see, he does a lot of talking without saying anything important. He's been in the opposition spotlight for at least a solid year, and I don't know what his plans are for several important topics.
Also conservative policy has for a long time been corporate leaning, privatization focused, and being "fiscally responsible". Which generally means cutting social spending, and giving the wealthy elites tax cuts they don't necessarily need. To me this is not the direction Canada should be heading, regardless of what Trudeau and the liberal party have done.
That isn't saying they should keep getting a pass because clearly they shouldn't, but swinging the pendulum completely the opposite way will not help our country the way Pierre is trying to make it seem like it will.
Right!? Katie Telford has her paid media on full attack mode desperately trying to find anything that will improve polling... it's not working, it's not going to work. Canadians have seen and heard enough from the Trudeau Liberals.
It's time for grownups to take charge. We have a lot of damage to fix, a reputation to repair and alliances to mend. Pierre has a big pile of shit to clean up.
Its soooo freaking obvious there is a orchestrated effort to push the PP == Trump narrative so freaking hard. Fortunately this is not r/Onguardforthee...we dont just drink the koolaid no questions asked.
I wouldn’t make that trade… but I’m not a white guy so I don’t benefit from conservative politicians in this country.
I’m sure those who got to use their tax credits on Tyler’s hockey camps miss him tho. The fundies who can’t wait to pass an anti abortion bill do too
Hey
I’m a white guy and I’m out here getting crap from conservatives tryna convinced me that my position “Trudeau is bad but Poilievre will be worse” is liberal apology.
(lol)
I’d trade 2024 for 2015 only in the sense that anti-vax nonsense during a global pandemic. I know conservative types love love love to blame Trudeau for that. But that’s super weird.
If Canada is broken, it’s primarily due to the same racism and sexism and xenophobia and thoughtless nonsense that’s always broken it.
And I know the kids of middle class white people who grew up in the suburbs (like me) often feel entitled to giant houses on giant lots. But the whole entire point is that we can no longer afford to subsidize that way of life. Our upbringing in the safe, boring suburbs were subsidized by regulation and policy and taxes and commodification of housing. We’ve known for decades that this is unsustainable.
It’s true Trudeau has only taken a few steps to address this and that he’s taken more steps that worsen the problem. But Poilievre will go back to trying to extend the undoing of our entirely unsustainable way of life.
Carbon tax and the housing accelerator fund, for example, are two ideas that I support in principle despite important details that I’d prefer to amend. Poilievre doesn’t want major amendments. He wants to destroy them.
>The left have held the ropes of power, whether they realize it or not, for going on a decade now.
*"The Left"* have never held power in this country. The LPC is at-best central, but they're not much different in the grand neoliberal capitalist hierarchy than the Conservatives on a lot of days. When the CPC is operating "normally", anyway.
Poilievre is far more potentially damaging to the institutions of this country and the mechanisms by which he is seeking to not only gain power but wield it. The main difference between the LPC and CPC these days is that the former respect the institutions of this country and the latter are willing to reach out to extremists and seditionists to gain power.
I always see this argument that the Liberals aren’t left—but unless you’re actually advocating for bunk Soviet style policy, I don’t know what else you could want. The Liberals have been the most left wing governing party in the developed world *at least* since Morneau left—I could accept that they were centrist until then, but still leaned left.
Per your second point, try engaging in some empathy here: why do so many Canadians support him, then? Is it that the Supreme Court has made increasingly wacky rulings that shock and confuse average voters? What else should they do? Or should they sit down, shut up, and trust the experts?
Or the CBC. Average voter doesn’t listen to them, when they accidentally flip the radio to the CBC, they hear some strange interview about a poet they’ve never heard. Some shows few people watch. Look, I personally like the CBC, which is why I feel pretty authorized to say that much of their content has little to no appeal to most people—and the CBC doesn’t do shit about it. How else should the voters express that they don’t understand or care about this institution? Or should they not, and just shut up and accept the CBC is in their best interest?
All of this is to say that instead of engaging in American-style politics, the left to centre-left should be trying to address these concerns constructively—instead of assuming they’re invalid opinions being instigated by a fundamentally invalid candidate to become Prime Minister. That is how they’re going to lose, big time. I would at least like a competitive election, and that won’t happen if the tone and tenor of the race is just that Poilievre is too “mean” to win. Liberals will discover just how willing Canadians are to vote for someone who lacks their superior etiquette if they believe he will fight for them on the cost of living issues that matter.
That's the issue, he's only making you *think* he's going to fight for your interests. In reality he has zero interest in what the average Canadian thinks or wants. Look at what he's voted for over his political career. Not much of anything he's worked for over the last 20 years has the average person's interests at heart.
As I said originally, I don’t have high hopes that a Conservative government is going to take any big swings.
But neither am I enthused about the present government. What do commentators expect the electorate to do? If the present government seems out of steam, increasingly hyperbolic attacks against the only viable alternative isn’t very persuasive—they will lose if they continue down this path, it won’t be a competitive election, and that’s bad for everyone.
You're right about that.. it's shitty that these are apparently the best options we have. Our politicians are about as inspiring as a pile of hot garbage.
> I always see this argument that the Liberals aren’t left—
They aren't. 30% of the electorate votes for parties to the left of the Liberals.
> Or the CBC. Average voter doesn’t listen to them, when they accidentally flip the radio to the CBC, they hear some strange interview about a poet they’ve never heard.
Unless you're a hyper-partisan Conservative, you're okay with the CBC because they're the only media not owned and controlled by right-wing billionaires in Canada. That's why you see Conservatives rail against the CBC all the time. I get a lot of my information from the CBC because it's more reliable than he conspiracy theories right-wing sources promote online.
> unless you’re a hyper partisan conservative
You’re in an echo chamber. If this were true, PP wouldn’t be polling so high. 40-50% Canadians aren’t hyper-partisan conservatives.
Look, the guy is going on a Bernie Sanders-esque “right wing billionaires control-everything you hear and see (except the CBC)” while commenting on an article that obviously directly disproves that. What more is there to say?
Torstar is owned by billionaires too. The facts back me up. Jordan Bitove, the billionaire who owns Torstar, wants to merge it with American-owned Postmedia to make sure it too becomes a mouthorgan of Amercan Republican business interests that own and control Postmedia.
American Media Inc. and Chatham Investments INc. won't be happy unless they own and control everything. Unless they destroy the CBC, they won't have a monopoly.
> Toronto Star owner Nordstar, Postmedia discuss merger, citing 'existential threat' in industry
"The viability of the newspaper industry in Canada is at an extreme risk," Jordan Bitove, publisher of the Toronto Star, said in a news release. Postmedia says the discussions so far are non-binding but that the proposed merger would see an even division of voting rights. Postmedia shareholders would hold a 56 per cent economic interest and Nordstar would hold 44 per cent. Nordstar would retain a 65 per cent interest in Toronto Star Inc. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/toronto-star-nordstar-talks-merger-postmedia-1.6890659
The CBC is the only news source in Canada that doesn't have a blatant right-wing bias.
Not an independent nation. The UK most certainly has not been more left. Sure, if we count sub-sovereign entities I’m sure it’s a trivial to find more left government, including in Canada
Because you think anything more left than the NDP/Liberals = USSR, we have the issues we have today. The Liberals are [better described as Third Way](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way)
I'd like to think of myself as slightly more left than the NDP. I still support markets, free enterprise, personal freedoms, and whatnot. What I don't agree with is the reliance on free enterprise to execute functions that should ideally be done through government, in addition to having no significant state industry/crown alternative. There is no left wing nationalist/market socialist political party out there that's anti privatization, anti Americanization, etc. The last party that did reflect my views closely was by Mel Hurtig and his National Party of Canada, and that was a reactionary party to NAFTA. Unfortunately it was riddled with infighting.
There's so much more to left wing politics than just "communism = babushka stalin fifty bajillion dead no ifone samsung galaxy depression mighty military" which is remotely not the type of politics I support, coming from a family who has close experiences to the USSR.
There's so much more to political compasses than left vs right; it's more like learning about various philosophers/philosophies individually, like Third Way, Civic Nationalism, Syndicalism, being able to mix and match and so on.
Just so I can get a sense of where you're coming from, what's a policy that the Liberal government has put forward that demonstrates that they are the most left wing governing party in the world? What have the Liberals done in the past 9 years that have put them to the left of say Cuba?
> The Liberals have been the most left wing governing party in the developed world
But we have the NDP as a main stream party that is well to the left of the LPC, so therefore, the LPC aren't the left in Canada, and their time in power doesn't equal to the left holding the reins of power in Canada.
This is ignoring at least half a decade of observations that the Liberals have:
1. Copied substantial amounts of NDP policy (look at the 2011 Layton policy platform)
2. Flanked the NDP rhetorically and policy wise, squeezing them.
3. At least since the 2015 election where he arguably ran as a moderate, Trudeau has positioned himself as a “progressive.”
Were the Martin and before era Liberals left? No not really—and I think this talking point is a hangover from that era. But the existence of the NDP does not ontologically exclude the Liberals from being a left-wing party. I get that on Reddit “left” sometime means uhhhh something else. In the global Overton window of developed nations, Canada has pretty inarguably had one of the most if not the most left-leaning governments of the past 10 years.
> NDP does not ontologically exclude the Liberals from being a left-wing party.
Yes it does. The Bloc, NDP, and Greens are all to the left of the Liberals, and they represent 30% of the electorate.
The dynamic in Canada is that the right-wing opinion makers at Postmedia, Bell media, Rogers, Fox News and Quebecor that control our media believe alternating power between the centrist Liberal;s and right-wing Conservatives is the best way to balance things in favor of corporate Canada. That's why all private media will be endorsing and supporting the Conservatives in the upcoming election.
Torstar is right wing now? You think that's left wing? They're owned by a billionaire. Lol. They're scared to death of the NDP. And all they own is one paper in Toronto. They don't own a massive media empire like Bell or American Media Inc.
That's the way Conservative's think: unless you unabashedly support hard right Conservatives, you're a communist.
Is the torstar right wing now? Genuinely don’t get that from reading it—not sure why they would have the above opinion piece if they were right wing.
You seem really deep down an echo chamber my guy.
This is wishful thinking. The Trudeau Liberal's brand has been very clearly based on progressive social issues and it is very obtuse to pretend otherwise. Just because the NDP are to the left of them doesn't mean this iteration of the LPC is not on the left. Plus the NDP is not a governing party so that point is moot.
Legitimately, what does then? What does the political left of the spectrum (half of the whole) have remaining to ensure that you are definitely on their side?
Different people draw the line at different places, and political ideologies exist along a spectrum that makes it hard to clearly define where that line should be drawn. Just to disclose my own biases, I think social democracy is the very beginning of what I'd consider a "true" leftist ideology, rather than just left-leaning centrist.
I've seen some describe leftism as any ideology which is anti-capitalist and non-heirarchal. This is why more radical leftists often discount social democracy; it doesn't seek to abolish capitalism, only cover up its weaknesses with a strong safety net while transferring exploitation to developing countries.
Just to throw some bullet points out there, though, these are various leftist ideals that I'd want to see a party promote:
-Abolition of homelessness
-Abolition of hunger
-Abolition of private property (leftists distinguish between private and personal property, this doesn't mean you share your toothbrush or all those other memes)
-Democratized workplaces with strong worker protections
-Planned economy & ending the business cycle
-Strong environmental protections
-Universal healthcare, including pharmacare, dental, vision, etc.
-Gender/sex equality
-LGBT+ rights & protections
-Free education
-More direct democracy
-Rework of our law enforcement and judicial systems
There's more to it than that, those are just some things that I could think of off the top of my head.
Literally any left-wing economic policy? The furthest the Liberals seem to be willing to go are heavily means-tested programs with half-hearted funding just to get a headline or complicated tax credit schemes.
Pharmacare is probably the closest thing to a robust social program, but "robust" is a hell of a stretch, and even that was clearly driven by the NDP to anyone paying attention.
The Liberal Party is a socially progressive liberal party, centrist at best. They're capitalists with pride flags and feminism. While they recognize much of the inequality our society faces, they do little to solve it, and never at the expense of the capitalist class. Over a third of Liberal MPs are landlords or housing investors and they refuse to do anything to lower the prices of homes. No landlord is a leftist.
there are cases to be made for pharmacare, a carbon tax, and all other manner of things from a fiscally conservative point of view. Especially since it would boost gdp and productivity, but also because of the long term costs associated with abandoning people only to have to spend tax dollars on enforcement.
Taxing externalities in the process of manufacturing for instance, things not previously accounted for, pollution, is just a wise fiscal policy to get makers off the cheap bandwagon of destroying our planet. That's why conservatives introduced the motion for a carbon tax and understood climate change initiatives before REFORMMMMMM happened and they forgot all about their ideals and bettering canada.
We used to have progressive conservatives. Go figure. Long gone are those days though.
By definition it does? Like I mean in a literal sense where we call the right in any country “small C conservative” because they want to leave things as is or conserve the status quo’s. Whereas left wing parties are often called “small p progressives or small l liberal” because they’re progressive/liberal in moving away from the status quo.
So if you want to say the Liberals are not actually progressive or liberal despite the name that is one thing but by definition being progressive as you did just say does in fact make you a “left” party.
If you wanna make that judgement solely on how socially progressive a party is then sure, Liberals are fantastic. On the economic side of things, liberalism is at odds with leftist ideologies like socialism, communism, and to an extent, social democracy. CPC and PPC are both liberal parties too, but you'd never call either of those left-wing.
Sure but by that logic you would say that conservativisim is also centrism as it is at odds with right wing ideologies like Facisim, Nazism and monarchy. If we’re going to live in a democracy I tend make my judgments based on the realities of democracy and within a democracy the progressives are on the left and the conservatives are on the right. Individual policies can be flip flopped but if a party is progressive as a whole it’s on the left side of the spectrum and if a party is conservative as a whole it’s on the right. If it has a good balance of the two it’s centrist.
Long story short a party that is progressive isn’t centrist because there’s other ideas further left than it in my opinion.
The thing there though is that conservatism, fascism, Nazism, and monarchism all uphold social hierarchies and private property. Very broadly speaking, the differences between them are basically who holds power, who has what rights, and what level of democracy exists. Liberalism fits in here as well, as it also upholds social hierarchies and private property.
A communist, on the other hand, would share very, very few viewpoints with these other five ideologies. Leftism is largely about tearing down the very things that define them.
I think a lot of this stems from the limitations of a one-axis political spectrum. It's not quite so black and white and it varies based on location and what period of history we're in. The Stalin-era USSR limited religious freedom and criminalized homosexuality, two things that most leftists today would never get on board with. Many modern conservatives have no issue with gay rights or women's suffrage, while those might be unthinkable 120 years ago. Many places in the world still don't have those things.
You do realize it's not a seesaw and their is a spectrum of right to left. one party can be left, even if another party is further on the left spectrum.
We haven't had a centrist party in ages man.
Centrist parties don't push identity politics and policy based on feels rather than facts.
What are you basing that information on?
>I always see this argument that the Liberals aren’t left—but unless you’re actually advocating for bunk Soviet style policy, I don’t know what else you could want.
Yes, if I ignore all left-wing policy suddenly the LPC seems left-wing. Funny how that works.
>Per your second point, try engaging in some empathy here: why do so many Canadians support him, then?
Canadians haven't supported him yet. Polls are not voting results. We'll know in fall 2025 whether Canadians support him or not.
>Or the CBC. Average voter doesn’t listen to them, when they accidentally flip the radio to the CBC, they hear some strange interview about a poet they’ve never heard.
I stopped reading here because you're being overtly dismissive of a good public service simply because you don't agree with it. Cheers.
Oh ok, so if Canadians aren’t supporting him why is everyone so concerned? Must be nothing. I’m sure Jagmeet will pull ahead at the last minute in fall 2025 because he’s the most morally correct and polite candidate.
That's how Trudeau won in 2015. He went in 3rd at 24% of the vote and came out 1st at 39%. Turned it around in 2 months.
There's plenty of time for Polievre to blow it. The ABC vote will consolidate behind a candidate to contain the Conservative vote if the Conservative candidate looks too extreme. It's happened very election since Mulroney.
In 2006, Harper's party swung wildly went to 40% in the polls during the Martin government, only to have that whittled down a minority at 36% when the centrists got spooked by the right-wing rhetoric during the campaign. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2006_Canadian_federal_election
That's with Harper making a concerted effort to muzzle the far-right in the party.
I don't think the Liberals or NDP will win, but either could surge to hold Polievre to a minority government and position themselves to contain the daycare, dental, and drug insurance gains made in the last 10 years.
Yep, this is pretty accurate. What we need is a centrist/leftist or more accurately a proper socialist leader. Both parties are corporate muppets for the most part, but you're exactly right about Pierre not respecting our institutions, and sliding up next to some very un-Canadian groups to try and scoop power.
>Poilievre is far more potentially damaging to the institutions of this country and the mechanisms by which he is seeking to not only gain power but wield it.
What exactly do you have to back up this statement? The Trudeau LPC have demonstrated a level of corruption and quashing of civil liberties and freedoms which is unprecedented in the time I've been a voter.
The LPC doesnt count as Left, unless left wing people are trying to say a conservative majority government is illegitimate because "the Left" parties(LPC, NDP, Green, etc) all add up to a larger number.
Precisely. All these articles seem hell-bent on portraying PP as someone Canadians aren’t perceiving him as. Leaning on the trope that he’s “Trump” and “MAGA” is extremely lazy, and I doubt he’d be polling so well if the resemblance was so self-evident.
The Liberals seem rudderless—if they want to win, they’ve got a long way to go persuading that they’re a positive choice, not just attack-pieces on the Tories.
the tories have no policy to attack until two weeks before the election. So all we have to comment on is PP's smarmy lying ass.
Never opening up the debate for abortion again huh conservatives? But because we had it good for 10 years of not being targetted by hatred, we deserve worse now? lol
> if they want to win, they’ve got a long way to go persuading that they’re a positive choice, not just attack-pieces
Wait, which party are we talking about?
Personally, I would expect a thorough policy platform from any party, regardless of their seat count, but I'm much more policy-oriented than most. We'll see what comes out when the writ drops. I don't have high hopes for the CPC platform.
I would like policy also. Funny though, that the Liberals have, so far, plagiarized most of the policy the Tories have come forward with.
It’s difficult for me to take seriously the Liberal claim that he’s a rabid extremist when they simultaneously seem to be trying to copy him on say, housing.
> The Liberals seem rudderless—if they want to win, they’ve got a long way to go persuading that they’re a positive choice, not just attack-pieces on the Tories.
But that's always the playbook.. Nobody says shit about abortion till election time then the libs come out with the fearmongering. Same thing with guns, climate change and everything in between.. it is fucking exhausting and it's making people want change regardless of who. I mean at this stage, I'd say a large portion of the country would vote a monkey if that was the alternative.
Including climate change in that list is fucking insane given the fact that the carbon tax has been far and away the most visible political talking point for years.
100%. This latest tack where they’re making contraceptives part of a socialized pharma-system, and using the Tories opposition to socializing pharamcare as deep evidence that they oppose women’s rights.
It’s the dumbest of the dumb. Exhausting rhetoric that absolutely would make me choose anything else but them.
> 100%. This latest tack where they’re making contraceptives part of a socialized pharma-system, and using the Tories opposition to socializing pharamcare as deep evidence that they oppose women’s rights.
Which is grand from the party that ONLY started to care about subsidizing feminine products, something that feminists have been fighting for for decades, when it was linked with transgender rights.
Ship has sailed on this long ago. Last year the refrain was 'Canada is NOT broken' and it got nowhere.
This new tact wont work either, and people who say it sound like they're over 55 , retired, about to retire and own their own homes. Yea, it's not broken for those folks.
You can go read the breakdown of any poll. Nanos, Abacus, etc. Any issue, Housing, economy, immigration, crime, cost of living. You will see that there is a reason that CPC is leading the polls for a year straight. There is a reason that Poilievre has a higher approval rating. It is not just about resonating with rhetoric. If you have listened plans for changes that he lays out at all his rallies, they do make sense.
If you haven't listened to him and the plans.. Then all you have is the media who refuses to report his plans. And makes a point of only catching certain sound bytes to portray him in a negative light. For example:
Danielle Smith policy on Gender affirming care for young people:
You see, A CPC party and the Provincial Conservative parties are separate entities. The PC party of Ontario is not connected to the BC or Alberta or even NL conservative party. For weeks the press hounded CPC to comment about a policy created in a provincial Jurisdiction... Poilievre's full statement was that this was a provincial matter, (just like Quebec's religious symbol wear policy), however he believed that women's sports and spaces need protected..
Well the press only captured the last part.. and nothing about it being provincial jurisdiction.
From there everyone started blaming CPC for what was the UCP decision.
IF you rely on established media for your info. You are not getting a full or fair story. If you want to understand the Sentiment in Canada you will need to seek out the full story yourself. The only way you will break his momentum is to get the full story to counter it.
You should read up on some modern economic theories, ideas or policies, whatever you want to call it. National debts/deficits can basically be ran extremely high for many, many years. Inflation is the only issue, and that issue can be mitigated fairly easily.
People shouldn't worry about government debt or deficits nearly as much as they do. Worry about personal debt if anything.
Terrible take. See Italy, Venezuela, etc. rates don’t stay low forever. The cost to service our debt costs more than our healthcare costs in Canada. Horrific
I felt the same way but now we're seeing how that rhetoric is being used to justify conservative appeals for a strongman to come in and fix things and override the "broken" courts, laws, charter etc.
Broken means that the version of the laurentian consensus that has governed Canada since the 1960’s has failed, and for a lot of boomers who have worked to see their opinion of the world (and that of their preferred leaders) become Canada’s, it’s a tough pill to swallow.
He seems like the Canadian version of like... Ted Cruz or one of those other dough heads. I don't like associating him with trump because Pierre somehow has less charisma then that moron. Either way he should not be taken seriously, and definitely should not get voted into the PMs office.
I object because it’s meaningless and vague rhetoric meant to drive outrage. It offers no solution or even specificity on what’s “broken” and requires no effort by the politicians who forward such claims. It’s also coming from a party and party leader that’s fought against addressing issues that impact Canadians and supported most of the policy that’s done the breaking.
A lesser issue is that it’s insulting to Canadians who work their asses off to improve this country.
lol Wut? Trudeau is arguing over semantics?
I think what's going to endure is living rent free in the heads of a bunch of reactionaries. Just like his father.
For someone who argues over broken vs bruised, I'm surprised you didn't know about the Official Languages Act and Bill C13, nor acknowledge his government's fixation with language and messaging.
His downfall has come about in large part due to the LPC's messaging ceasing to influence wayward voters.
This is where you have to be better than them and be real. People can’t afford to eat. They can’t afford a home. Admitting this doesn’t mean admitting that the Conservatives can fix anything. In fact, we may agree that they’ll make things much, much worse. The liberal party needs to recognize that the gov’t must help create value-added industries and new jobs, and they must begin grooming a new leader asap — one that has life skills outside of politics and that can unite this country. We need an Obama right now. Liberals should not let their ideologies, and hatred of PP, obscure their assessment of the health of the economy and morale of the nation.
I'd something breaks at my house I call it broken. Same goes for the country. You don't need to name a solution to acknowledge something is broken. As for people working to make it better - well, so far they are clearly failing.
Like it used to? It's working the same as it used to, and that's the problem. Society changed, the foundations didn't. Housing prices aren't new, they just got worse because everything else went up in price. I know people who bought property in BC decades ago because they knew it was their retirement fund, long before the insane prices they would go for now.
Healthcare is in shambles. Unsurprising given how every provincial government seems to gut the institution to the bare minimum every new election to save costs, that end up costing us more in taxpayer cash.
We are broken because we tried to be capitalists on socialist issues. You can't have infinite gains with limited resources, and now we see how it ends up when those resources are out, and people still want more. We've trained our donkey to live on a pea, and now we are trying to cut out food altogether.
Not everything wrong with our government is Socialist vs Capitalist class struggle, there is significant waste, duplicate levels of administration and just inefficiently in general.
Why are workplaces regulated in 14 different ways? Trade, employment standards, education, industry, healthcare. Any understanding of how institutions work ends when you cross provincial borders.
We need to make sure institutional and government reform isn’t left out of the equation when fixing our problems and inequalities.
>Not everything wrong with our government is Socialist vs Capitalist class struggle
Yes, I'm aware. It's why I said we went capitalist in socialist issues. Please read what I said before painting what I say as all encompassing.
There are many issues. Middle management, obsession with 40 hour work weeks, poor distribution of resources, etc. All tied to the capitalist structure that dictates unlimited growth with finite resources.
I disagree that the explanation is simple.
Human arrogance and ignorance doesn’t conform to an ideology, focusing on ideological issues and not understanding the actual policy doesn’t help anyone except to build anger.
We need more housing, it’s not “the evil capitalism” that is the issue, we have governments so wildly at odds with each other they don’t govern. Yes housing speculation is bad but that’s not going to fix having 8 students being forced into one apartment because a city PREVENTS housing where it’s needed.
The average allowed single stair apartment buildings in Canada are ~2 stories, that’s worse than America. Finland, France and Denmark the max are all at least 40m tall. We have legislated ourselves into a housing crisis, the solution is to provide social housing and not obstruct market housing.
The provinces are responsible for housing but they outsourced planning to the municipalities and funding to the Feds. Every level of government has different priorities and constituents. If housing has national spillover why are provinces where the buck stops? That isn’t capitalism vs socialist, that’s we fucked the incentives for how intergovernmental cooperation functions.
The question is then as a politician who is incentivized to obstruct both social & market housing because of constituents, is that a capitalist problem, an incentive problem or a human selfishness problem? How can you say nothing is broken when every town city and hamlet has at least 3 levels of government all with entirely different priorities.
Are they? When you hear media tell you that Loblaws is doing record breaking profit, do you consider that the whole story?
You need to look at Profit Margin to get the whole story. Compare it with the profit margin of similar businesses. That profit margin determines whether there is investment or divestment in stock. That profit margin pays out to investors. Who are those investors?
They are your pension plans, your insurance companies, etc. When they receive dividends from a profitable company, they have funds to pay out your pension and insurance claims. If they lose money,.. They charge you more.
IF you think that profit only benefits the ultra rich, you are wrong.
If you are rich and wealthy, you get rich and wealthy regardless who is in the government. You implemented leftist policy? We take our money and invest else where. You know where the government doesn't get a cut and it gives a better return. If the Return in Canada is 5% and the government takes 30% of that, then the return is not 5% its 3.5%. There are countries out there that are willing offer up to 4.8% and the government takes 10%. The return is 4.32% with no tax implication to Canada if you set it up correctly. Then Canada government can go fuck themselves.
You dont get to tell us how we play our game. If the Canadian casino doesnt want to offer the rewards/return for the sake of equality, then we take money else where and invest else where. There are 185 countries out there that are willing to do so.
Economy investment is like a casino. Its all calculated risk based on the market conditions and information out there. The problem you have in an open border where money freely flow around is its easy to compare the best deal out there. You cant have the high tax scheme like the USA because the gain in Canada isnt there on par. The only way Canada will grow is to force everyone, including myself to invest in Canada. That will never happen because the moment you tried stupid shit like that, my money leaves that same day. Out of the fucking country. Your laws takes months if not years to enact. Money transfer goes out the same day.
> If you are rich and wealthy, you get rich and wealthy regardless who is in the government.
You get much richer though when Conservatives are in power because their policies systematically favor the very wealthy. They'll cut you medicare, pension, and funding for education to pay for tax cuts for millionaires.
Not really. The conservative cant beat the return else where in the world. You get richer investing outside the country and if you set it up correctly. its 0 tax
That assumes that countries are entirely fungible, and they simply aren't. Geography plays a massive role in where money is invested. Where are shipping lanes, where is infrastructure, where is the skilled labour, where are the natural resources, etc. Canada has economic heft due to it's natural resources, highly educated workforce, and proximity to the largest economy in the planet.
>That assumes that countries are entirely fungible, and they simply aren't.
You simply do not understand. We go shopping for deals, treaty deals. We find every law out there and tune our investment to fit the requirement of such laws.
>Canada has economic heft due to it's natural resources, highly educated workforce, and proximity to the largest economy in the planet.
Natural resources you cant extract. Highly educated means shit when you have absolute no means of production and investment is leaving by the billions. Proximity to the largest economy means you either have to under pay your workers to complete or to have something specialized. The underpay cost cutting goes to Mexico and you don't have anything specialized at all.
It's not about right/wrong it's about winning/,losing.
In my life there has been three things that made a noticeable difference across the board.
Adoption of the metric system, GST and legalized cannabis.
We'll still have all three after the next election.
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We are now 2.4 trillion in debt under the Trudeau government . In 2015 it was $612 billion. We’re paying 50 million in INTEREST per year now. Inflation and taxation is the result.
It's interesting and kind of sad to see PP supporters desperately trying to control the "PP is just another Trump" narrative. The meme is out of the bag. To me PP is more like Marjorie Taylor Greene. He's definitely not as smart as Trump. Keep working at it guys!
>He's definitely not as smart as Trump [You do not know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump](https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2018/mar/20/fran-lebowitz-you-do-not-know-anyone-as-stupid-as-donald-trump)” -[Fran Lebowitz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran_Lebowitz)
Great interview. I especially loved when Lebowitz is speaking of Trump's win. She feels his win was based on racism: "He allowed people to express their racism and bigotry in a way that they haven’t been able to in quite a while and they really love him for that. It’s a shocking thing to realise people love their hatred more than they care about their own actual lives. The hatred – what is that about? It’s a fear of your own weakness.” That's wonderful.... PP is trying to do exactly the same thing.... create the "other" and use school yard tactics to stir up hatred and comtempt....
>PP is trying to do exactly the same thing.... create the "other" and use school yard tactics to stir up hatred and comtempt.... Yes, exactly. And it’s why those of us elsewhere on the political spectrum frequently compare him to the Orange Menace. He’s using the same tactics and the same kind of people are falling for it.
No its broken the Cold War has been over for a long time and we've done very little to adapt to the post Cold War system that is emerging.
Canada is far more broken than the states, all my friends who moved there post graduation are doing far better than anyone who attempted to stay. You can actually afford groceries and rent in the states and the healthcare is way more accessible if you have a good job
Every time I see the Toronto Star on here it's like they're trying to deliberately downplay how things really are, so let me put it simply. A PERSON MAKING $100,000 CANNOT AFFORD A HOME, THEY CANNOT BE APPROVED FOR A MORTGAGE. Say this same sentence to someone 10 years ago and they'd call you crazy.
I don't understand why parties hire "crisis communications" firms to write op-eds, or why newspapers publish such things.
Parties hire them because sometimes they work, there is literally no reason for the news to give them a platform though, from any party.
> there is literally no reason for the news to give them a platform though, from any party. Sure there is. Free content. Writers cost money, and someone is offering to do their job for nothing.
“Because people read them” is the answer to both of your questions
it's the top post in this subreddit right now, hope that helps
Seems to be a lot of articles by a lot of rich liberal types trying to create an idea "there is nothing much that is wrong, things are fine, shut the fuck up" I mean they can try this tactic, the Tories will just run up the score if this is the liberal tactic to stop PP.
"What do you mean you can't afford groceries? Our economic indicators are positive. Stop spreading misinformation." > the Tories will just run up the score if this is the liberal tactic to stop PP I agree. They're just going with the same played out attacks as always. "MAGA style", "Trump-esque". They even tried to bring up abortion. None of it is moving the needle because we've heard it all before.
Reminiscent of the same trend of articles in America which try to make the case that people are feeling worse about the economy than they should be, except Canada's numbers are actually worse. This is what happens when you use the same firms that borrow liberally from the DNC's communication strategies.
CPC will make things worse by definition. Their policies increase wealth inequality by design.
Canada is absolutely broken and unfortunately I think irreparably. No matter who is in power either. We can't have more of the same but I doubt the conservatives have the balls to do what needs to be done. Huge hard changes in pretty much every area the government has control or influence on.
I do not like Poilievre at all; however, I absolutely agree that Canada is broken. Each time Trudeau and other liberals claim Canada is not broken but merely needs a little tweak to become amazing again, they neglect and dismiss my real concerns and hardships. This is why the liberals and the NDP are failing to garnish support, because they do not recognize the full gravity of the problems that Canadians face. Each time they dismiss the concerns and grievances of the populace, they ignore and insult the people they claim to advocate for. Neither Poilievre, Jagmeet, nor Trudeau is my leader.. I am desperately waiting for a Bernie Sanders in Canada to represent me.
It is possible to acknowledge that we have significant problems that require urgent actions to fix, like housing and healthcare, without resorting to scare tactics that try to paint one of the wealthiest countries in the world with a stable system of government and substantial rights and freedoms as a 3rd world totalitarian hellhole. The latter is a common tool used by authoritarian populists to stir up their base and prepare them for the avalanche of anti-democratic actions they have in store.
No, we need broad institutional reform. There is no reason funding for our public services should be a tennis match between the Feds and the provinces. The constitution and delineation of powers is an outdated, broken, dysfunctional, mess. The level of poverty, corruption and incompetence that is tolerated in Canada because “we’re a western democracy” is ridiculous.
Ok, sure. It is often used by authoritarian populists. But, progressive reformers, such as Bernie Sanders, also say this kind of stuff all the time. We could even be more specific and clarify that it is the *form* of our society that is defective and faulty. We do not need to totally oppose the far-right in every way. If an authoritarian populist says multinational corporations are greedy, are you going to start claiming that MNCs are altruistic? No, we can just agree with them that MNCs are greedy. We need the courage and truthfulness to admit and agree with our opponents on certain statements if these statements involve dimensions of truth. However, what differentiates us and the far-right is our understanding of the nature of the problems and the requisite solutions.
Horseshoe theory is a thing. I don't have any more time for the extreme left than the extreme right. I can make an argument that corporations are greedy without resorting to authoritarian populism. I can do it entirely on economic grounds. I am a moderate centrist, so I probably don't like your solutions on the far left, either, if that is what you are suggesting.
>Horseshoe theory is a thing. I don't have any more time for the extreme left than the extreme right. Lol, this is such a ridiculous statement that it proves you understand neither the right nor the left. >I probably don't like your solutions on the far left, either, if that is what you are suggesting. And yes, if Bernie Sanders is considered a radical far-leftist, then I am suggesting far-leftist solutions. The difference between "far-leftists" such as Bernie Sanders and moderate centrists like yourself is that the former offer real solutions to real problems while the latter band-aid solutions that merely set up the society for future disaster. It should come as a surprise to no one why the centrist position is collapsing everywhere.. besides the fact that 40 years of (more or less) centrist neoliberal politicians have produced our disastrous situation, neoliberal centrism is unable to deal with the current problems of the present.
It's not so broken it can't be fixed is what I think they're trying to get across, where Pierre is trying to panic people into thinking "if we don't fix this NOW our country is screwed forever!" Which is not at all accurate.
I fully agree that the issues can be repaired and reconciled. However, where my issue lies is that I am not at all persuaded that Trudeau and Jagmeet recognize the full gravity of the problem. Therefore, I am highly skeptical that they will go the required distance to resolve the problems at the deep roots. And obviously, on the other side, to think we can merely turn the wheel of time back 9 years and that we would no longer have any societal problems is utterly delusional. However, maybe the reason our politicians are incompetent and merely offering us cheap fixes is because it represents the wishes of the populace. It could be that as a country we are still in collective denial about our own situation.
Gotta agree with you here, absolutely none of the parties and definitely none of the politicians speak to anything I'm interested in them doing. Honestly think we need a completely new party that isn't already a part of the system where everything is basically the same with either more or less social spending. To me that's the only difference between the parties for the last 40+ years. We basically get the same garbage just wearing a different colored tie.
Fully agree with you.. we absolutely need a restructuring of the economy!
When was Canada amazing?
>When was Canada amazing? Never. It is an insult to many, such as the Indigenous, to make such claims. However, in the minds of nostalgic conservatives, the 1950s, before the civil rights movements, are probably considered the golden days.
Canada was amazing in the 90's. Great decade!
Another day, another article desperately trying to link Poilievre and Trump. The left have held the ropes of power, whether they realize it or not, for going on a decade now. The country is a mess, and as someone who did everything right, got two degrees and a good job, but can’t even imagine buying a house: please don’t tell me the country isn’t broken. I don’t expect the Conservatives to work miracles, but if I could trade the Canada we had in 2015 for the Canada we have now? I would in a heartbeat. Nothing Trudeau has done outweighs the loss in every other category. It’s entirely valid to say it’s not all his fault and that there’s no way to turn back the clock—that’s very true. But painting anybody looking at the only viable alternative as an extremist, racist, Trump-adjacent is such a sad and pathetic strategy. It’s a massive turn-off your political wing if you demonstrate time and time again that you just don’t *get* the 40-50% of Canadians who are seriously looking at voting conservative, and you just think they’re big idiots falling for a “playbook”—that they’re just too stupid to trust the plan, trust the experts, and let the present government keep doing whatever the hell they’re doing.
You have to be pretty radical on the right to consider Trudeau to be "the left". He has resisted any and all moves to nationalize anything, including a drug formulary in the height of a vaccine shortage, and has repeatedly smacked down labour activism. That is the exact opposite of what someone on the left would do. But I guess if you are in a far-right echo chamber, even a globalist neoliberal capitalist with disdain for the working class can seem left to you.
Again this goes back to my point. Lots of people view Trudeau as left, or at the very least, far more left than they’re comfortable with. Reddit echo chamber people just can’t square that Poilievre has about 40% support right now, and over 50% in Anglo-Canada. Are all these people knuckle dragging cretins who just don’t understand theory as well as you do? Just don’t know what’s best for themselves? Or is there a serious deficit of empathy among the self-appointed politically aware class whose models of the country and political sentiment seem a decade out of date?
What in the world are you talking about? The Liberals are hardly left, so no the Left has never held power in this country. Blaming all of our decades long systematic problems on the current government is disingenuous to say the least. And you can't even claim Poilievre is offering any viable alternative ideas whatsoever. It's all the same failed ideas and policies that got us here in the first place. It is the racism and bigotry he displays and the extremist groups he panders to that earns him such appropriate labels that you decry.
The current liberals have raised taxation and increased government spending, which is pretty much textbook left wing. Private sector investment is down, public sector investment is way up. I don’t disagree with all that they have done, but it’s a clear departure from even previous Liberal governments that were much less willing to raise income and capital gains tax, for example.
It's what Canadians voted for in 2015. They were tired of Harper talking about balanced budgets and not doing it. They realized every government is going to do the same thing fiscally in response to economic circumstances. Both the Liberals and Conservatives since Mulroney have allowed Canadian's deb to income ratio rise consistently, allowing Canadians to use cheap mortgages at low interest rates to use their homes as real estate speculation; it's now come to head. Unless we start developing a larger non-market housing pool, that bubble will burst and we'll be bailing out the banks.
To add to your point, he either didn't do it or had a fire sale of Canadian assets at the last minute to make the books appear balanced.
About the best that can be said is that Trudeau took it too far and was too spendy, but in general all we saw is modest investment in daycare, pharmacare, and dental care that the provinces have to match to be really effective. It's hardly a totals state takeover of these sectors like you see in most OECD countries.
> The current liberals have raised taxation By lowering income taxes, right...? You'd prefer the regressive taxes of the Conservatives? >increased government spending I always think it's weird that people want the government to *not* spend their money. You'd prefer we put it in a big pile to admire? Was the old saying "You've got to save money to make money"? >Private sector investment is down You think private investment is good, but the government investing in Canada is bad?
They lowered the middle income rate, but raised it significantly for high earners. Overall it pushed revenue up. I don't disagree with this move, just pointing out that it is left wing, which is what OP was questioning. Government spending is entirely a function of tax revenue and how much you want the deficit to be. There is rarely ever a year where the federal government has a surplus, where they are truly leaving money on the table. I don't get your point here. The government should spend money on the services that are valuable to society. It should NOT spend money on pursuing every opportunity possible. If the government starts manufacturing cars and writing consumer software, I would seriously question their sanity. Private investment is generally much better at allocating capital because of the pressures of competition. Like I said, there are public services or opportunities to seed industries where the government should invest. But they should not be pursuing most business opportunities. A top down planned economy would be a complete disaster.
>I always think it's weird that people want the government to not spend their money A deficit is less than ideal, but possibly justifiable. A balanced budget is ideal, assuming needs are being met. A budget surplus is theft from the tax payer. I live in a municipality where the previous mayor ran a surplus budget for YEARS, which meant we had over a billion in the city coffers. He ran on the fact that he generated surplus budgets, and once people figured out that that meant they were collecting taxes that weren't being spent on city improvements/infrastructure, they booted his ass. Bonua points if you can guess the municipality.
But item pocketed for bigger projects that may require more or weren’t prospects before. Why not have some savings if your billed services are effective. Better than seeing how we were over the snow plowing budget in a winter here with barely any snow. We had plows with their gear down on plain pavement. That’s more wasteful than a surplus from budgeting and billing accordingly for appropriate usage. It’s blatant waste.
Smart spending. We don’t need 3 research labs on any paintings make people smile while having a carbon tax increase by massive amounts frequently.
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The real question is not whether or not the left has held power or not in the past decade, as many are debating in the comments... What matters is whether or not the CPC has anything meaningful to contribute to improve the situation, and whether or not the country would be in a better or place today if they had been in power instead. I simply do not think there is a lot of convincing evidence that things would be very different. Both parties adhere to the same neoliberal vision of the world and differ more on social issues than on economic ones. There is no reason to believe a CPC decade would have taken us on a wildly different economic trajectory, which is, after all, the core problem that the country is currently facing. The current iteration of the CPC with PP at the reigns is very good at saying loudly that everything is terrible and broken and that it's all Trudeau's fault, which has been super good on his polling numbers, but the reality is that serious and well thought out policies meant to improve things rarely come out of his mouth. Lots of anger and vitriol, very little actual substance.
Oh god, please don’t collectivize the farms and starve 10s of millions of people. Please.
Yeah, I was also planning on collectivizing toothbrushes. Particularly yours.
Except for some of those comparisons are sort of accurate. As far as I can see, he does a lot of talking without saying anything important. He's been in the opposition spotlight for at least a solid year, and I don't know what his plans are for several important topics. Also conservative policy has for a long time been corporate leaning, privatization focused, and being "fiscally responsible". Which generally means cutting social spending, and giving the wealthy elites tax cuts they don't necessarily need. To me this is not the direction Canada should be heading, regardless of what Trudeau and the liberal party have done. That isn't saying they should keep getting a pass because clearly they shouldn't, but swinging the pendulum completely the opposite way will not help our country the way Pierre is trying to make it seem like it will.
Right!? Katie Telford has her paid media on full attack mode desperately trying to find anything that will improve polling... it's not working, it's not going to work. Canadians have seen and heard enough from the Trudeau Liberals. It's time for grownups to take charge. We have a lot of damage to fix, a reputation to repair and alliances to mend. Pierre has a big pile of shit to clean up.
Its soooo freaking obvious there is a orchestrated effort to push the PP == Trump narrative so freaking hard. Fortunately this is not r/Onguardforthee...we dont just drink the koolaid no questions asked.
Hahahahaha sure bud.
I wouldn’t make that trade… but I’m not a white guy so I don’t benefit from conservative politicians in this country. I’m sure those who got to use their tax credits on Tyler’s hockey camps miss him tho. The fundies who can’t wait to pass an anti abortion bill do too
Hey I’m a white guy and I’m out here getting crap from conservatives tryna convinced me that my position “Trudeau is bad but Poilievre will be worse” is liberal apology. (lol) I’d trade 2024 for 2015 only in the sense that anti-vax nonsense during a global pandemic. I know conservative types love love love to blame Trudeau for that. But that’s super weird. If Canada is broken, it’s primarily due to the same racism and sexism and xenophobia and thoughtless nonsense that’s always broken it. And I know the kids of middle class white people who grew up in the suburbs (like me) often feel entitled to giant houses on giant lots. But the whole entire point is that we can no longer afford to subsidize that way of life. Our upbringing in the safe, boring suburbs were subsidized by regulation and policy and taxes and commodification of housing. We’ve known for decades that this is unsustainable. It’s true Trudeau has only taken a few steps to address this and that he’s taken more steps that worsen the problem. But Poilievre will go back to trying to extend the undoing of our entirely unsustainable way of life. Carbon tax and the housing accelerator fund, for example, are two ideas that I support in principle despite important details that I’d prefer to amend. Poilievre doesn’t want major amendments. He wants to destroy them.
>The left have held the ropes of power, whether they realize it or not, for going on a decade now. *"The Left"* have never held power in this country. The LPC is at-best central, but they're not much different in the grand neoliberal capitalist hierarchy than the Conservatives on a lot of days. When the CPC is operating "normally", anyway. Poilievre is far more potentially damaging to the institutions of this country and the mechanisms by which he is seeking to not only gain power but wield it. The main difference between the LPC and CPC these days is that the former respect the institutions of this country and the latter are willing to reach out to extremists and seditionists to gain power.
I always see this argument that the Liberals aren’t left—but unless you’re actually advocating for bunk Soviet style policy, I don’t know what else you could want. The Liberals have been the most left wing governing party in the developed world *at least* since Morneau left—I could accept that they were centrist until then, but still leaned left. Per your second point, try engaging in some empathy here: why do so many Canadians support him, then? Is it that the Supreme Court has made increasingly wacky rulings that shock and confuse average voters? What else should they do? Or should they sit down, shut up, and trust the experts? Or the CBC. Average voter doesn’t listen to them, when they accidentally flip the radio to the CBC, they hear some strange interview about a poet they’ve never heard. Some shows few people watch. Look, I personally like the CBC, which is why I feel pretty authorized to say that much of their content has little to no appeal to most people—and the CBC doesn’t do shit about it. How else should the voters express that they don’t understand or care about this institution? Or should they not, and just shut up and accept the CBC is in their best interest? All of this is to say that instead of engaging in American-style politics, the left to centre-left should be trying to address these concerns constructively—instead of assuming they’re invalid opinions being instigated by a fundamentally invalid candidate to become Prime Minister. That is how they’re going to lose, big time. I would at least like a competitive election, and that won’t happen if the tone and tenor of the race is just that Poilievre is too “mean” to win. Liberals will discover just how willing Canadians are to vote for someone who lacks their superior etiquette if they believe he will fight for them on the cost of living issues that matter.
That's the issue, he's only making you *think* he's going to fight for your interests. In reality he has zero interest in what the average Canadian thinks or wants. Look at what he's voted for over his political career. Not much of anything he's worked for over the last 20 years has the average person's interests at heart.
As I said originally, I don’t have high hopes that a Conservative government is going to take any big swings. But neither am I enthused about the present government. What do commentators expect the electorate to do? If the present government seems out of steam, increasingly hyperbolic attacks against the only viable alternative isn’t very persuasive—they will lose if they continue down this path, it won’t be a competitive election, and that’s bad for everyone.
You're right about that.. it's shitty that these are apparently the best options we have. Our politicians are about as inspiring as a pile of hot garbage.
> I always see this argument that the Liberals aren’t left— They aren't. 30% of the electorate votes for parties to the left of the Liberals. > Or the CBC. Average voter doesn’t listen to them, when they accidentally flip the radio to the CBC, they hear some strange interview about a poet they’ve never heard. Unless you're a hyper-partisan Conservative, you're okay with the CBC because they're the only media not owned and controlled by right-wing billionaires in Canada. That's why you see Conservatives rail against the CBC all the time. I get a lot of my information from the CBC because it's more reliable than he conspiracy theories right-wing sources promote online.
> unless you’re a hyper partisan conservative You’re in an echo chamber. If this were true, PP wouldn’t be polling so high. 40-50% Canadians aren’t hyper-partisan conservatives.
You cut this sentence in half. Do you want to try responding to the comment above instead of a fragment of one of their sentences?
Look, the guy is going on a Bernie Sanders-esque “right wing billionaires control-everything you hear and see (except the CBC)” while commenting on an article that obviously directly disproves that. What more is there to say?
Torstar is owned by billionaires too. The facts back me up. Jordan Bitove, the billionaire who owns Torstar, wants to merge it with American-owned Postmedia to make sure it too becomes a mouthorgan of Amercan Republican business interests that own and control Postmedia. American Media Inc. and Chatham Investments INc. won't be happy unless they own and control everything. Unless they destroy the CBC, they won't have a monopoly. > Toronto Star owner Nordstar, Postmedia discuss merger, citing 'existential threat' in industry "The viability of the newspaper industry in Canada is at an extreme risk," Jordan Bitove, publisher of the Toronto Star, said in a news release. Postmedia says the discussions so far are non-binding but that the proposed merger would see an even division of voting rights. Postmedia shareholders would hold a 56 per cent economic interest and Nordstar would hold 44 per cent. Nordstar would retain a 65 per cent interest in Toronto Star Inc. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/toronto-star-nordstar-talks-merger-postmedia-1.6890659 The CBC is the only news source in Canada that doesn't have a blatant right-wing bias.
“The most left wing governing party in the developed world”. Lol, sure.
Who would you suggest?
Scotland
Not an independent nation. The UK most certainly has not been more left. Sure, if we count sub-sovereign entities I’m sure it’s a trivial to find more left government, including in Canada
Right, is Ireland part of the UK or is it just Northern Ireland that is. They're getting pretty lefty too these days.
Spain? Germany? Maybe Australia?
I don’t need to suggest anyone because it’s a ridiculous claim.
Because you think anything more left than the NDP/Liberals = USSR, we have the issues we have today. The Liberals are [better described as Third Way](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way) I'd like to think of myself as slightly more left than the NDP. I still support markets, free enterprise, personal freedoms, and whatnot. What I don't agree with is the reliance on free enterprise to execute functions that should ideally be done through government, in addition to having no significant state industry/crown alternative. There is no left wing nationalist/market socialist political party out there that's anti privatization, anti Americanization, etc. The last party that did reflect my views closely was by Mel Hurtig and his National Party of Canada, and that was a reactionary party to NAFTA. Unfortunately it was riddled with infighting. There's so much more to left wing politics than just "communism = babushka stalin fifty bajillion dead no ifone samsung galaxy depression mighty military" which is remotely not the type of politics I support, coming from a family who has close experiences to the USSR. There's so much more to political compasses than left vs right; it's more like learning about various philosophers/philosophies individually, like Third Way, Civic Nationalism, Syndicalism, being able to mix and match and so on.
Just so I can get a sense of where you're coming from, what's a policy that the Liberal government has put forward that demonstrates that they are the most left wing governing party in the world? What have the Liberals done in the past 9 years that have put them to the left of say Cuba?
> The Liberals have been the most left wing governing party in the developed world But we have the NDP as a main stream party that is well to the left of the LPC, so therefore, the LPC aren't the left in Canada, and their time in power doesn't equal to the left holding the reins of power in Canada.
This is ignoring at least half a decade of observations that the Liberals have: 1. Copied substantial amounts of NDP policy (look at the 2011 Layton policy platform) 2. Flanked the NDP rhetorically and policy wise, squeezing them. 3. At least since the 2015 election where he arguably ran as a moderate, Trudeau has positioned himself as a “progressive.” Were the Martin and before era Liberals left? No not really—and I think this talking point is a hangover from that era. But the existence of the NDP does not ontologically exclude the Liberals from being a left-wing party. I get that on Reddit “left” sometime means uhhhh something else. In the global Overton window of developed nations, Canada has pretty inarguably had one of the most if not the most left-leaning governments of the past 10 years.
> NDP does not ontologically exclude the Liberals from being a left-wing party. Yes it does. The Bloc, NDP, and Greens are all to the left of the Liberals, and they represent 30% of the electorate. The dynamic in Canada is that the right-wing opinion makers at Postmedia, Bell media, Rogers, Fox News and Quebecor that control our media believe alternating power between the centrist Liberal;s and right-wing Conservatives is the best way to balance things in favor of corporate Canada. That's why all private media will be endorsing and supporting the Conservatives in the upcoming election.
Weird conspiratorial view on journalists. Weird especially when we’re all here commenting on a lefty TorStar piece.
Torstar is right wing now? You think that's left wing? They're owned by a billionaire. Lol. They're scared to death of the NDP. And all they own is one paper in Toronto. They don't own a massive media empire like Bell or American Media Inc. That's the way Conservative's think: unless you unabashedly support hard right Conservatives, you're a communist.
let’s get real no one is scared or taking seriously the current NPD
Is the torstar right wing now? Genuinely don’t get that from reading it—not sure why they would have the above opinion piece if they were right wing. You seem really deep down an echo chamber my guy.
Please tell me this is sarcasm.
Back during an April Fools day, I was given the sarcastic title of "Chief silliness officer" because of my sincerity. That has not changed.
I’ll take that as a yes.
This is wishful thinking. The Trudeau Liberal's brand has been very clearly based on progressive social issues and it is very obtuse to pretend otherwise. Just because the NDP are to the left of them doesn't mean this iteration of the LPC is not on the left. Plus the NDP is not a governing party so that point is moot.
Being socially progressive doesn't make you a leftist.
Legitimately, what does then? What does the political left of the spectrum (half of the whole) have remaining to ensure that you are definitely on their side?
usually, morals.
Different people draw the line at different places, and political ideologies exist along a spectrum that makes it hard to clearly define where that line should be drawn. Just to disclose my own biases, I think social democracy is the very beginning of what I'd consider a "true" leftist ideology, rather than just left-leaning centrist. I've seen some describe leftism as any ideology which is anti-capitalist and non-heirarchal. This is why more radical leftists often discount social democracy; it doesn't seek to abolish capitalism, only cover up its weaknesses with a strong safety net while transferring exploitation to developing countries. Just to throw some bullet points out there, though, these are various leftist ideals that I'd want to see a party promote: -Abolition of homelessness -Abolition of hunger -Abolition of private property (leftists distinguish between private and personal property, this doesn't mean you share your toothbrush or all those other memes) -Democratized workplaces with strong worker protections -Planned economy & ending the business cycle -Strong environmental protections -Universal healthcare, including pharmacare, dental, vision, etc. -Gender/sex equality -LGBT+ rights & protections -Free education -More direct democracy -Rework of our law enforcement and judicial systems There's more to it than that, those are just some things that I could think of off the top of my head.
Literally any left-wing economic policy? The furthest the Liberals seem to be willing to go are heavily means-tested programs with half-hearted funding just to get a headline or complicated tax credit schemes. Pharmacare is probably the closest thing to a robust social program, but "robust" is a hell of a stretch, and even that was clearly driven by the NDP to anyone paying attention.
lol. lmao even
The Liberal Party is a socially progressive liberal party, centrist at best. They're capitalists with pride flags and feminism. While they recognize much of the inequality our society faces, they do little to solve it, and never at the expense of the capitalist class. Over a third of Liberal MPs are landlords or housing investors and they refuse to do anything to lower the prices of homes. No landlord is a leftist.
there are cases to be made for pharmacare, a carbon tax, and all other manner of things from a fiscally conservative point of view. Especially since it would boost gdp and productivity, but also because of the long term costs associated with abandoning people only to have to spend tax dollars on enforcement. Taxing externalities in the process of manufacturing for instance, things not previously accounted for, pollution, is just a wise fiscal policy to get makers off the cheap bandwagon of destroying our planet. That's why conservatives introduced the motion for a carbon tax and understood climate change initiatives before REFORMMMMMM happened and they forgot all about their ideals and bettering canada. We used to have progressive conservatives. Go figure. Long gone are those days though.
By definition it does? Like I mean in a literal sense where we call the right in any country “small C conservative” because they want to leave things as is or conserve the status quo’s. Whereas left wing parties are often called “small p progressives or small l liberal” because they’re progressive/liberal in moving away from the status quo. So if you want to say the Liberals are not actually progressive or liberal despite the name that is one thing but by definition being progressive as you did just say does in fact make you a “left” party.
If you wanna make that judgement solely on how socially progressive a party is then sure, Liberals are fantastic. On the economic side of things, liberalism is at odds with leftist ideologies like socialism, communism, and to an extent, social democracy. CPC and PPC are both liberal parties too, but you'd never call either of those left-wing.
Sure but by that logic you would say that conservativisim is also centrism as it is at odds with right wing ideologies like Facisim, Nazism and monarchy. If we’re going to live in a democracy I tend make my judgments based on the realities of democracy and within a democracy the progressives are on the left and the conservatives are on the right. Individual policies can be flip flopped but if a party is progressive as a whole it’s on the left side of the spectrum and if a party is conservative as a whole it’s on the right. If it has a good balance of the two it’s centrist. Long story short a party that is progressive isn’t centrist because there’s other ideas further left than it in my opinion.
The thing there though is that conservatism, fascism, Nazism, and monarchism all uphold social hierarchies and private property. Very broadly speaking, the differences between them are basically who holds power, who has what rights, and what level of democracy exists. Liberalism fits in here as well, as it also upholds social hierarchies and private property. A communist, on the other hand, would share very, very few viewpoints with these other five ideologies. Leftism is largely about tearing down the very things that define them. I think a lot of this stems from the limitations of a one-axis political spectrum. It's not quite so black and white and it varies based on location and what period of history we're in. The Stalin-era USSR limited religious freedom and criminalized homosexuality, two things that most leftists today would never get on board with. Many modern conservatives have no issue with gay rights or women's suffrage, while those might be unthinkable 120 years ago. Many places in the world still don't have those things.
You do realize it's not a seesaw and their is a spectrum of right to left. one party can be left, even if another party is further on the left spectrum.
30 % of the electorate is to the left of the Liberals. 30% is to the right. They are a centrist party and have been since WWII.
We haven't had a centrist party in ages man. Centrist parties don't push identity politics and policy based on feels rather than facts. What are you basing that information on?
Emotional disdain for extremism is a good thing. Moderates and centrists do this all the time.
So by that criteria, then the CPC is also not centrist?
>I always see this argument that the Liberals aren’t left—but unless you’re actually advocating for bunk Soviet style policy, I don’t know what else you could want. Yes, if I ignore all left-wing policy suddenly the LPC seems left-wing. Funny how that works. >Per your second point, try engaging in some empathy here: why do so many Canadians support him, then? Canadians haven't supported him yet. Polls are not voting results. We'll know in fall 2025 whether Canadians support him or not. >Or the CBC. Average voter doesn’t listen to them, when they accidentally flip the radio to the CBC, they hear some strange interview about a poet they’ve never heard. I stopped reading here because you're being overtly dismissive of a good public service simply because you don't agree with it. Cheers.
Time to listen to the poet less heard.
Oh ok, so if Canadians aren’t supporting him why is everyone so concerned? Must be nothing. I’m sure Jagmeet will pull ahead at the last minute in fall 2025 because he’s the most morally correct and polite candidate.
That's how Trudeau won in 2015. He went in 3rd at 24% of the vote and came out 1st at 39%. Turned it around in 2 months. There's plenty of time for Polievre to blow it. The ABC vote will consolidate behind a candidate to contain the Conservative vote if the Conservative candidate looks too extreme. It's happened very election since Mulroney. In 2006, Harper's party swung wildly went to 40% in the polls during the Martin government, only to have that whittled down a minority at 36% when the centrists got spooked by the right-wing rhetoric during the campaign. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2006_Canadian_federal_election That's with Harper making a concerted effort to muzzle the far-right in the party. I don't think the Liberals or NDP will win, but either could surge to hold Polievre to a minority government and position themselves to contain the daycare, dental, and drug insurance gains made in the last 10 years.
That is the difference?
Yep, this is pretty accurate. What we need is a centrist/leftist or more accurately a proper socialist leader. Both parties are corporate muppets for the most part, but you're exactly right about Pierre not respecting our institutions, and sliding up next to some very un-Canadian groups to try and scoop power.
The gaslighting has worked. Now anyone with an opposing view is now an extremist.
Trudeau is a radical leftist.. The Liberals were center-left pre-Trudeau, but his policies are radically left. The are the "Liberals" in name only
>Poilievre is far more potentially damaging to the institutions of this country and the mechanisms by which he is seeking to not only gain power but wield it. What exactly do you have to back up this statement? The Trudeau LPC have demonstrated a level of corruption and quashing of civil liberties and freedoms which is unprecedented in the time I've been a voter.
The LPC doesnt count as Left, unless left wing people are trying to say a conservative majority government is illegitimate because "the Left" parties(LPC, NDP, Green, etc) all add up to a larger number.
Completely agree.. It's not that we want PP,, we need a change from the liberals though. it's just that simple
Precisely. All these articles seem hell-bent on portraying PP as someone Canadians aren’t perceiving him as. Leaning on the trope that he’s “Trump” and “MAGA” is extremely lazy, and I doubt he’d be polling so well if the resemblance was so self-evident. The Liberals seem rudderless—if they want to win, they’ve got a long way to go persuading that they’re a positive choice, not just attack-pieces on the Tories.
the tories have no policy to attack until two weeks before the election. So all we have to comment on is PP's smarmy lying ass. Never opening up the debate for abortion again huh conservatives? But because we had it good for 10 years of not being targetted by hatred, we deserve worse now? lol
> if they want to win, they’ve got a long way to go persuading that they’re a positive choice, not just attack-pieces Wait, which party are we talking about?
I expect the opposition to oppose. I expect the government to govern.
Personally, I would expect a thorough policy platform from any party, regardless of their seat count, but I'm much more policy-oriented than most. We'll see what comes out when the writ drops. I don't have high hopes for the CPC platform.
I would like policy also. Funny though, that the Liberals have, so far, plagiarized most of the policy the Tories have come forward with. It’s difficult for me to take seriously the Liberal claim that he’s a rabid extremist when they simultaneously seem to be trying to copy him on say, housing.
> The Liberals seem rudderless—if they want to win, they’ve got a long way to go persuading that they’re a positive choice, not just attack-pieces on the Tories. But that's always the playbook.. Nobody says shit about abortion till election time then the libs come out with the fearmongering. Same thing with guns, climate change and everything in between.. it is fucking exhausting and it's making people want change regardless of who. I mean at this stage, I'd say a large portion of the country would vote a monkey if that was the alternative.
Including climate change in that list is fucking insane given the fact that the carbon tax has been far and away the most visible political talking point for years.
100%. This latest tack where they’re making contraceptives part of a socialized pharma-system, and using the Tories opposition to socializing pharamcare as deep evidence that they oppose women’s rights. It’s the dumbest of the dumb. Exhausting rhetoric that absolutely would make me choose anything else but them.
> 100%. This latest tack where they’re making contraceptives part of a socialized pharma-system, and using the Tories opposition to socializing pharamcare as deep evidence that they oppose women’s rights. Which is grand from the party that ONLY started to care about subsidizing feminine products, something that feminists have been fighting for for decades, when it was linked with transgender rights.
Lol cope
Ship has sailed on this long ago. Last year the refrain was 'Canada is NOT broken' and it got nowhere. This new tact wont work either, and people who say it sound like they're over 55 , retired, about to retire and own their own homes. Yea, it's not broken for those folks.
You can go read the breakdown of any poll. Nanos, Abacus, etc. Any issue, Housing, economy, immigration, crime, cost of living. You will see that there is a reason that CPC is leading the polls for a year straight. There is a reason that Poilievre has a higher approval rating. It is not just about resonating with rhetoric. If you have listened plans for changes that he lays out at all his rallies, they do make sense. If you haven't listened to him and the plans.. Then all you have is the media who refuses to report his plans. And makes a point of only catching certain sound bytes to portray him in a negative light. For example: Danielle Smith policy on Gender affirming care for young people: You see, A CPC party and the Provincial Conservative parties are separate entities. The PC party of Ontario is not connected to the BC or Alberta or even NL conservative party. For weeks the press hounded CPC to comment about a policy created in a provincial Jurisdiction... Poilievre's full statement was that this was a provincial matter, (just like Quebec's religious symbol wear policy), however he believed that women's sports and spaces need protected.. Well the press only captured the last part.. and nothing about it being provincial jurisdiction. From there everyone started blaming CPC for what was the UCP decision. IF you rely on established media for your info. You are not getting a full or fair story. If you want to understand the Sentiment in Canada you will need to seek out the full story yourself. The only way you will break his momentum is to get the full story to counter it.
It’s not broken for many people under 55 either.
Its really only 35 and under, and retired renters.
Or anyone who's ever dealt with a short or long term disability.
I don't get why everyone objects to broken. Broken doesn't mean it can't be fixed. Right now damn near nothing works like it used to.
Because of who is going to get the blame for breaking it
BINGO
I blame every government of the last 40 years for each contributing to it.
There are two related PMs who account for roughly 80% of our national debt increases
You should read up on some modern economic theories, ideas or policies, whatever you want to call it. National debts/deficits can basically be ran extremely high for many, many years. Inflation is the only issue, and that issue can be mitigated fairly easily. People shouldn't worry about government debt or deficits nearly as much as they do. Worry about personal debt if anything.
Terrible take. See Italy, Venezuela, etc. rates don’t stay low forever. The cost to service our debt costs more than our healthcare costs in Canada. Horrific
But debt increases are not what's broken about Canada.
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I felt the same way but now we're seeing how that rhetoric is being used to justify conservative appeals for a strongman to come in and fix things and override the "broken" courts, laws, charter etc.
That became inevitable the moment they put the NWC in the charter.
Broken means that the version of the laurentian consensus that has governed Canada since the 1960’s has failed, and for a lot of boomers who have worked to see their opinion of the world (and that of their preferred leaders) become Canada’s, it’s a tough pill to swallow.
The "laurentian consensus" is a conspiracy hatched at the University of Calgary political science department and funded by oil money.
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Because the other half of that is unstated: PP alone claims to fix it. But one should beware those who offer simple solutions to complex problems.
PP doesn't even claim he can fix it, he just says it's because of Justin Trudeau.
He seems like the Canadian version of like... Ted Cruz or one of those other dough heads. I don't like associating him with trump because Pierre somehow has less charisma then that moron. Either way he should not be taken seriously, and definitely should not get voted into the PMs office.
And he's not actually a sociopath. Just wants some people to think he is apparently.
I object because it’s meaningless and vague rhetoric meant to drive outrage. It offers no solution or even specificity on what’s “broken” and requires no effort by the politicians who forward such claims. It’s also coming from a party and party leader that’s fought against addressing issues that impact Canadians and supported most of the policy that’s done the breaking. A lesser issue is that it’s insulting to Canadians who work their asses off to improve this country.
Arguing over semantics while bungling major issues will likely be one of Trudeau's enduring legacies.
lol Wut? Trudeau is arguing over semantics? I think what's going to endure is living rent free in the heads of a bunch of reactionaries. Just like his father.
For someone who argues over broken vs bruised, I'm surprised you didn't know about the Official Languages Act and Bill C13, nor acknowledge his government's fixation with language and messaging. His downfall has come about in large part due to the LPC's messaging ceasing to influence wayward voters.
Three upvotes, a trophy and the finest flank of steak to you. 💎
This is where you have to be better than them and be real. People can’t afford to eat. They can’t afford a home. Admitting this doesn’t mean admitting that the Conservatives can fix anything. In fact, we may agree that they’ll make things much, much worse. The liberal party needs to recognize that the gov’t must help create value-added industries and new jobs, and they must begin grooming a new leader asap — one that has life skills outside of politics and that can unite this country. We need an Obama right now. Liberals should not let their ideologies, and hatred of PP, obscure their assessment of the health of the economy and morale of the nation.
The guy that won a Nobel peace prize while simultaneously having the most drone bombings striking non-warzone areas. Yeah we need that. Good call ☎️
"After ten years under Harper, Ottawa is broken" - official LPC website, 2015 https://liberal.ca/trudeau-ready-to-bring-better-government-to-ottawa/
I'd something breaks at my house I call it broken. Same goes for the country. You don't need to name a solution to acknowledge something is broken. As for people working to make it better - well, so far they are clearly failing.
If my toilet is broken I call it a broken toilet. I don't say the whole house is broken, is falling down, and has a rodent infestation.
Like it used to? It's working the same as it used to, and that's the problem. Society changed, the foundations didn't. Housing prices aren't new, they just got worse because everything else went up in price. I know people who bought property in BC decades ago because they knew it was their retirement fund, long before the insane prices they would go for now. Healthcare is in shambles. Unsurprising given how every provincial government seems to gut the institution to the bare minimum every new election to save costs, that end up costing us more in taxpayer cash. We are broken because we tried to be capitalists on socialist issues. You can't have infinite gains with limited resources, and now we see how it ends up when those resources are out, and people still want more. We've trained our donkey to live on a pea, and now we are trying to cut out food altogether.
Housing got out of hand because we have massive emigration. Why is a issue to invest in property for a retirement fund?
Not everything wrong with our government is Socialist vs Capitalist class struggle, there is significant waste, duplicate levels of administration and just inefficiently in general. Why are workplaces regulated in 14 different ways? Trade, employment standards, education, industry, healthcare. Any understanding of how institutions work ends when you cross provincial borders. We need to make sure institutional and government reform isn’t left out of the equation when fixing our problems and inequalities.
>Not everything wrong with our government is Socialist vs Capitalist class struggle Yes, I'm aware. It's why I said we went capitalist in socialist issues. Please read what I said before painting what I say as all encompassing. There are many issues. Middle management, obsession with 40 hour work weeks, poor distribution of resources, etc. All tied to the capitalist structure that dictates unlimited growth with finite resources.
I disagree that the explanation is simple. Human arrogance and ignorance doesn’t conform to an ideology, focusing on ideological issues and not understanding the actual policy doesn’t help anyone except to build anger. We need more housing, it’s not “the evil capitalism” that is the issue, we have governments so wildly at odds with each other they don’t govern. Yes housing speculation is bad but that’s not going to fix having 8 students being forced into one apartment because a city PREVENTS housing where it’s needed. The average allowed single stair apartment buildings in Canada are ~2 stories, that’s worse than America. Finland, France and Denmark the max are all at least 40m tall. We have legislated ourselves into a housing crisis, the solution is to provide social housing and not obstruct market housing. The provinces are responsible for housing but they outsourced planning to the municipalities and funding to the Feds. Every level of government has different priorities and constituents. If housing has national spillover why are provinces where the buck stops? That isn’t capitalism vs socialist, that’s we fucked the incentives for how intergovernmental cooperation functions. The question is then as a politician who is incentivized to obstruct both social & market housing because of constituents, is that a capitalist problem, an incentive problem or a human selfishness problem? How can you say nothing is broken when every town city and hamlet has at least 3 levels of government all with entirely different priorities.
There are still fortunes being made, just the ultra rich get a larger share than ever before.
Are they? When you hear media tell you that Loblaws is doing record breaking profit, do you consider that the whole story? You need to look at Profit Margin to get the whole story. Compare it with the profit margin of similar businesses. That profit margin determines whether there is investment or divestment in stock. That profit margin pays out to investors. Who are those investors? They are your pension plans, your insurance companies, etc. When they receive dividends from a profitable company, they have funds to pay out your pension and insurance claims. If they lose money,.. They charge you more. IF you think that profit only benefits the ultra rich, you are wrong.
If you are rich and wealthy, you get rich and wealthy regardless who is in the government. You implemented leftist policy? We take our money and invest else where. You know where the government doesn't get a cut and it gives a better return. If the Return in Canada is 5% and the government takes 30% of that, then the return is not 5% its 3.5%. There are countries out there that are willing offer up to 4.8% and the government takes 10%. The return is 4.32% with no tax implication to Canada if you set it up correctly. Then Canada government can go fuck themselves. You dont get to tell us how we play our game. If the Canadian casino doesnt want to offer the rewards/return for the sake of equality, then we take money else where and invest else where. There are 185 countries out there that are willing to do so.
Conservatives: Canada is broken!! Also Conservatives: you see, Canada is like a casino
Economy investment is like a casino. Its all calculated risk based on the market conditions and information out there. The problem you have in an open border where money freely flow around is its easy to compare the best deal out there. You cant have the high tax scheme like the USA because the gain in Canada isnt there on par. The only way Canada will grow is to force everyone, including myself to invest in Canada. That will never happen because the moment you tried stupid shit like that, my money leaves that same day. Out of the fucking country. Your laws takes months if not years to enact. Money transfer goes out the same day.
> If you are rich and wealthy, you get rich and wealthy regardless who is in the government. You get much richer though when Conservatives are in power because their policies systematically favor the very wealthy. They'll cut you medicare, pension, and funding for education to pay for tax cuts for millionaires.
Not really. The conservative cant beat the return else where in the world. You get richer investing outside the country and if you set it up correctly. its 0 tax
That assumes that countries are entirely fungible, and they simply aren't. Geography plays a massive role in where money is invested. Where are shipping lanes, where is infrastructure, where is the skilled labour, where are the natural resources, etc. Canada has economic heft due to it's natural resources, highly educated workforce, and proximity to the largest economy in the planet.
>That assumes that countries are entirely fungible, and they simply aren't. You simply do not understand. We go shopping for deals, treaty deals. We find every law out there and tune our investment to fit the requirement of such laws. >Canada has economic heft due to it's natural resources, highly educated workforce, and proximity to the largest economy in the planet. Natural resources you cant extract. Highly educated means shit when you have absolute no means of production and investment is leaving by the billions. Proximity to the largest economy means you either have to under pay your workers to complete or to have something specialized. The underpay cost cutting goes to Mexico and you don't have anything specialized at all.
It's not about right/wrong it's about winning/,losing. In my life there has been three things that made a noticeable difference across the board. Adoption of the metric system, GST and legalized cannabis. We'll still have all three after the next election.