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Canadian Politics: The Surreality of Life under King Corona


Tywin Manderly

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On 7/28/2020 at 2:13 PM, maarsen said:

Too much socializing? In Ottawa?? 

Haha ByWard Market is the place to be!

I went to one of their (small) gay bars on a visit earlier this year...me and my friend were the sole patrons! At least it made karaoke less intimidating than usual. 

Ford opened up the GTA today. I think it's the wrong move but I am a bit conservative. Let's see how the numbers pan out in the next few months. My prediction is that Canada will be back at over 1,000 cases / day by the end of summer. 

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9 hours ago, Paxter said:

Haha ByWard Market is the place to be!

I went to one of their (small) gay bars on a visit earlier this year...me and my friend were the sole patrons! At least it made karaoke less intimidating than usual. 

Ford opened up the GTA today. I think it's the wrong move but I am a bit conservative. Let's see how the numbers pan out in the next few months. My prediction is that Canada will be back at over 1,000 cases / day by the end of summer. 

The long weekend is coming up so this should be the test. I really hope you are wrong but.... 

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5 hours ago, maarsen said:

The long weekend is coming up so this should be the test. I really hope you are wrong but.... 

I have a feeling politicians are watching hospitalization and deaths more than cases at the moment. With better testing now in place, it’s almost impossible that we will see flat or declining new cases now that restrictions are lifted. But we should hopefully be able to keep the most vulnerable safe.

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Update

July        27      28      29     30      31      1       2       3

BC          24      23      41     29     50       -       -

AB        304      80    133   113   127       -       -      

SK          31        9      50     38     14     15       8     17

MB          6         5       3       2       6       2      18      7

ON      119     111     76     89    134   124    116    88

PQ       145     169   176   122    164   146    141  123 

M-4         0         0       0       0        2       0       2

Total     686     397   479   393    497   287   285   235

An update, but it's not very clear what's going on because of BC and AB not reporting on the weekend, and now ON not reporting on the holiday today. I don't know if more provinces will report. Tomorrow ON will break down the numbers between Monday and Sunday, in all likelihood, which Worldometer will not do.

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My family and childhood/high school friends are in Ottawa/Gatineau so I have great angst over any spikes. Same with the Laurentians. 

Paxter, I imagine The Market to be a mere shadow of what it was in my late teens/early 20's circa 1990-1995.

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16 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

Alberta just updated it's back to school plan, and surprise surprise, it's still ass.

Quebec's plan is just to not have a plan, so you may still be ahead of us! I'm horrified for my friends who are teachers.

Have any of you been following the WE Charity scandal? Any thoughts on it? It's been hard for me (or maybe I haven't cared enough) to cut through the tangle of political bullshit from all parties on this one. Is this a major corruption scandal, worthy of resignation (as the Conservatives are calling for)? Or just another in a long line of Trudeau's sometimes very dumb decisionmaking?

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My take is that as his family actually worked for the money they got from We, there is no ethics issue as there was no gift. Looking bad and being bad are two different things. Government's deal with banks every day. Recusing yourself from dealing with bank legislation would leave an empty Parliament. 

As to We itself, my daughter's ex boyfriend spent 6 months working for them and that left a sour taste in his mouth. 

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1 hour ago, Caligula_K3 said:

Quebec's plan is just to not have a plan, so you may still be ahead of us! I'm horrified for my friends who are teachers.

Have any of you been following the WE Charity scandal? Any thoughts on it? It's been hard for me (or maybe I haven't cared enough) to cut through the tangle of political bullshit from all parties on this one. Is this a major corruption scandal, worthy of resignation (as the Conservatives are calling for)? Or just another in a long line of Trudeau's sometimes very dumb decisionmaking?

I've been following it. It seems apparent to me that the public service made the final call, but there was definitely some really fucking stupid Liberal decision making, re: to recuse or not to recuse. Still, in my circles it's definitely more of a nothingburger-- but given the amount of social pruning I've been doing over the last few years, my circles may not be the best bellwether.

Singh, Angus, Poilievre, et others of that ilk, can go fuck themselves though. Canada has MUCH bigger fish to fry, but good job on tanking a charity that rewards community service, especially since quite a few schools in eastern Canada have made a time commitment to the same a requirement to graduate.

I'm much more concerned about this recent signed agreement between Ottawa and Alberta about lessening environmental protections in the OG industry. It's bullshit, and I wish I understood how such a thing could be signed by a minority government [on the Fed side] without any debate... at least insofar as I've been able to determine.  

   

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8 minutes ago, maarsen said:

My take is that as his family actually worked for the money they got from We, there is no ethics issue as there was no gift. Looking bad and being bad are two different things. Government's deal with banks every day. Recusing yourself from dealing with bank legislation would leave an empty Parliament. 

As to We itself, my daughter's ex boyfriend spent 6 months working for them and that left a sour taste in his mouth. 

That's basically my take, it looks bad but I don't really care so much about looks, and any issue was over the minute the apology was issued.

The bollocks the Cons and NDP have pulled in order to try and make something of this non-issue on the other hand. That pisses me off.

Agree with Jeordhi, whatever's going on with the Alberta environmental protections thing is a concern, as is the lack of any talk on police reform, and the fact that someone tried to assassinate the PM but we're apparently not going to talk about that.

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11 minutes ago, JEORDHl said:

I've been following it. It seems apparent to me that the public service made the final call, but there was definitely some really fucking stupid Liberal decision making, re: to recuse or not to recuse. Still, in my circles it's definitely more of a nothingburger-- but given the amount of social pruning I've been doing over the last few years, my circles may not be the best bellwether.

Singh, Angus, Poilievre, et others of that ilk, can go fuck themselves though. Canada has MUCH bigger fish to fry, but good job on tanking a charity that rewards community service, especially since quite a few schools in eastern Canada have made a time commitment to the same a requirement to graduate.

I'm much more concerned about this recent signed agreement between Ottawa and Alberta about lessening environmental protections in the OG industry. It's bullshit, and I wish I understood how such a thing could be signed by a minority government [on the Fed side] without any debate... at least insofar as I've been able to determine.  

   

The province of Ontario requires 40 hours of volunteer work to graduate from high school. I got to work with them both at my hospital job and my volunteer position at the  Dunlap Observatory 

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48 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

Quebec's plan is just to not have a plan, so you may still be ahead of us! I'm horrified for my friends who are teachers.

Have any of you been following the WE Charity scandal? Any thoughts on it? It's been hard for me (or maybe I haven't cared enough) to cut through the tangle of political bullshit from all parties on this one. Is this a major corruption scandal, worthy of resignation (as the Conservatives are calling for)? Or just another in a long line of Trudeau's sometimes very dumb decisionmaking?

You aren't seeing anymore media stories about the WE scandal because the media have walked back from it. Sheer, of course, still wants everyone to resign. His argument, basically, is that the contract was a reward for hiring Margaret as a speaker, instead of a way to put money in the hands of students who can't get summer jobs, in exchange for working as volunteers.

The fact is, the Kielburgers hired Conservatives when they were in power, and Harper's wife threw at least one party for them. When the Liberals came to power, they hired Margaret, and why not? She certainly has a very public story. Hey, if Harper's mother had been willing to talk about loss and grief after the death of her husband I bet they would have hired her as a speaker, though she wouldn't have been a draw like Margaret. Trudeau's brother was hired when Margaret was unavailable, and he's a documentary filmaker so he's not exactly a boring speaker either.

I actually think the party that has come off worse for wear is WE. They took the line that Margaret and son weren't hired because they were Trudeaus, but because they are interesting people with stories to tell. They could have said that being Trudeaus played some part and been more credible. But then again, I don't know where Margaret's head was at during the Harper years, maybe she wasn't up to doing a lot of speaking. The Conservatives and NDP tried to throw mud at Sophie as well, but her participation was cleared by the ethics commissioner. In the meantime, all kinds of people are trying to dig up dirt against WE, and from what I've seen, some is justified. As maarsen said above, a lot of people are unhappy with the way they operate.

The bizarre things Conservatives said pissed people off. Their supporters were claiming across media that it was a billion dollar scam and all the money would end up with WE. These people are as nutty as Trump supporters. Just for the record, $900 M for students was approved, but in the end the contract was only for $500 M or $550 M, and WE actually thought less than $200 M would be spent because the students would not be able to put in the hours they needed to do for full payment. The NDP attacked them for laying off workers. Holy shit, half the country is laid off and a charity is supposed to use donations to pay workers not doing any work?

The other party that came off looking bad was Morneau. It must be nice to be so rich you didn't notice that nobody on staff got around to making sure the trip to Africa had been paid for. But I learned something during this scandal, Morneau's wife is a McCain, and she is heavily involved in charity works. Geez, I bet they donated way more over the years than the $42 k for the Africa trip. They had already donated $100,000 to WE this year, $50 k for helping folks in Africa to deal with the coronavirus. It just shows the rich just don't think about this stuff. Morneau looks like he's going to lose his job as Finance minister for his role.

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I just wanted to add one more comment. Hospitals are charities also that employ many people and deal with governments, local, provincial, and federal. A doctor working at my hospital became  the federal Minister of Health. Was that a conflict of interest? 

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10 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

That's basically my take, it looks bad but I don't really care so much about looks, and any issue was over the minute the apology was issued.

The bollocks the Cons and NDP have pulled in order to try and make something of this non-issue on the other hand. That pisses me off.

Agree with Jeordhi, whatever's going on with the Alberta environmental protections thing is a concern, as is the lack of any talk on police reform, and the fact that someone tried to assassinate the PM but we're apparently not going to talk about that.

All of the highlighted. You can add the inquiry into the Nova Scotia shootings. It should be a Nova Scotia inquiry, but that's such a hot potato the NS premier was refusing to do it, saying that because it was the RCMP it had to be the federal government. It's the provinces that contract with the RCMP, the provinces that run the contracts. It should be a provincial inquiry, but no bloody way was McNeil willing to let mud stick on him. I guess if the feds didn't agree to participate, there'd be no inquiry. This is not a federal matter overall, it's about the way NS runs their forces.

One of the Nova Scotia issues, as far as I can tell from watching the story unfold and interviews with lots of people, is that Nova Scotia is full of misogynists who really live in the dark ages when it comes to protecting women. Hey, it's bad in lots of places in this country, but it sounds really bad in NS.

I read a lot of comment sections on CBC, Huffington Post, Global et al stories that pop up on my Facebook feed, and I don't think I'm going to surprise anyone when I say the most rabid haters on the internet come from Alberta. But they are closely followed by folks from Nova Scotia, and then, imo, smaller town Ontario.

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1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

Morneau looks like he's going to lose his job as Finance minister for his role.

Sorry to clip all that. This part though, I don't know if the opposing parties did enough damage to necessitate firing Morneau. I suspect they'll let it ride, or worst case play musical chairs with the cabinet. 

Here's a bit more about the deregulation re: AB OG. Of particular concern to me is the lessening of downstream monitoring in the Athabasca, said concern becoming more acute considering AB looking at possibly releasing 'treated' tailings into it. 

 

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59 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I read a lot of comment sections on CBC, Huffington Post, Global et al stories that pop up on my Facebook feed, and I don't think I'm going to surprise anyone when I say the most rabid haters on the internet come from Alberta. But they are closely followed by folks from Nova Scotia, and then, imo, smaller town Ontario.

Albertans are from Uranus.

It is known.

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9 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

All of the highlighted. You can add the inquiry into the Nova Scotia shootings. It should be a Nova Scotia inquiry, but that's such a hot potato the NS premier was refusing to do it, saying that because it was the RCMP it had to be the federal government. It's the provinces that contract with the RCMP, the provinces that run the contracts. It should be a provincial inquiry, but no bloody way was McNeil willing to let mud stick on him. I guess if the feds didn't agree to participate, there'd be no inquiry. This is not a federal matter overall, it's about the way NS runs their forces.

One of the Nova Scotia issues, as far as I can tell from watching the story unfold and interviews with lots of people, is that Nova Scotia is full of misogynists who really live in the dark ages when it comes to protecting women. Hey, it's bad in lots of places in this country, but it sounds really bad in NS.

I read a lot of comment sections on CBC, Huffington Post, Global et al stories that pop up on my Facebook feed, and I don't think I'm going to surprise anyone when I say the most rabid haters on the internet come from Alberta. But they are closely followed by folks from Nova Scotia, and then, imo, smaller town Ontario.

Since Trudeau was elected the vitriol coming from the west seems to be more about his name than his policies. I guess they still spit when Trudeau senior's name is spoken. 

You read comments on news stories? That is one cesspool I hesitate to stir. 

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