Canadian Politics: Is that a Light at the End of the Tunnel?

[Fragile Bird]

6 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

True.

Admittedly dumb question.

 

Listen, a lot of people are asking the question, so no, your reaction is shared by a lot of people.

On the other hand, I saw a panel member on CBC’s Power and Politics say the reaction is always the same when a minority government calls an election, because Canadians would rather have a root canal done than go through an election. On the bright side, we don’t do two years of electioneering like the Americans do, or four for presidential elections. Only 33 days!

[TrueMetis]

23 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Listen, a lot of people are asking the question, so no, your reaction is shared by a lot of people.

On the other hand, I saw a panel member on CBC’s Power and Politics say the reaction is always the same when a minority government calls an election, because Canadians would rather have a root canal done than go through an election. On the bright side, we don’t do two years of electioneering like the Americans do, or four for presidential elections. Only 33 days!

We're kind of spoiled in that way aren't we? We have one federal election every 3.5 years on average, it's lasts a month, and we still bitch like crazy and only 70% of us can even be bothered to vote.

[JGP]

Definitely spoiled. 

Like, it's only been a few weeks and it's made me cranky as fuck. For real. 

[TrueMetis]

Remember what I said about how this election was just getting started?

 

[JGP]

47 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

Remember what I said about how this election was just getting started?

 

'I concur with that comment' lol

[TrueMetis]

So some of the reactions to the tweet I posted above have gotten me thinking, and I feel the need to write down my thoughts. Basically I've seen a whole lot of NDP supporters really mad about what happened, and there seems to be an underlying sense of "we know what's best for you why don't you just accept that" in regards to the indigenous people from the NDP supporters I'm talking about. Since I don't expect they're react all that well to what I'm going to say, and I don't want to deal with them, I'm just going to write it here instead.

First and foremost as long as the conservative party exists anything else is going to take a back seat to preventing them from forming government. That's just basic self-preservation on our part, So every time some NDP jagoff goes on about how the Liberals and Cons are the same, completely invalidating our experiences it becomes real bloody hard to take NDP claims they'd do so much more for Indigenous people seriously. They're not listening now, why would they in the future?

Second, these people need to stop deluding themselves that they're actually significantly different from the Liberals. this probably goes back to the acting like the Liberals and Cons are the same thing, because if the Liberal and Cons are the same, and the NDP and Liberals are pretty similar, then the NDP and Cons are pretty similar. So either they have to give up the idea that the Liberals and Cons are the same, or give up the idea that the NDP and Liberals are radically different, and they won't do the former, so the NDP must be very different from the Liberals.

Third, even if we do accept that the NDP is significantly different on the theoretical side of things from the Liberals, there's no reason to believe that once they're actually in power they won't govern basically like the Liberals. And plenty of reason to believe that given how the provincial NDP in BC and Alberta governs/did govern. So even ignoring everything else, why would we vote for "the Liberals but less likely to get in power?"

 

Okay that felt good to get off my chest, even though no one who needs to hear it is particularly likely to see it.

[JGP]

I'm not super dialed in on the BQ, is anyone here? Why wouldn't they support a minority Con government?

 

edit: and Mainstreets polling is so ridiculously skewed, reminds me of their polling on Calgary's Mayoral election

[JGP]

I sometimes wish I spoke French. CPAC will apparently have the English captioned debate on at 10 Eastern

[kairparavel]

On 9/1/2021 at 12:37 PM, JEORDHl said:

I'm not super dialed in on the BQ, is anyone here? Why wouldn't they support a minority Con government?

 

edit: and Mainstreets polling is so ridiculously skewed, reminds me of their polling on Calgary's Mayoral election

What will/would Cons do to move forward a BQ platform? Admittedly I've been out of the country long enough that I don't really know any party's platform. The BQ was formed by defectors from both Liberals and PC and aside from their separatist platform they also support causes or at least did, that align closer with the Liberals.

[Fragile Bird]

Update 

Aug     30Mo  31Tu   1We   2Th    3Fr    4Sa    5Su  

BC         503    655     785    801        

AB         865    920   1315  1339  

SK         199     274    321    265

MB          34      34      57      36

ON        694    525    656    865

PQ         386    425    690    699

NB           39        3      11      10

NS           31        3        0        0

PE             0         3        0        0      

NL             9        0         8       0

North      57       11      16       0

Total    2817   2853  3866  4020

I stopped doing this back in June because I got annoyed with all the different reporting and non-reporting being done on long weekends. And the numbers were so good, who really cared anymore. I've been thinking of starting up for more than two weeks now. Seeing those eye-popping numbers in Alberta gave me the final push. That's like 4,500 cases in Ontario. And both Jason Kenney and his top public health official disappeared from news conferences until this week. Open up the province and disappear! Oh, and cut the wages of the nurses, too! Worst-case scenario (which we really have never seen) predicts up to 13,500 cases a day in the province. I sincerely hope that doesn't happen. An official here in Ontario resigned from his job because he said the province is withholding it's worst-case scenario numbers.

Vaccinations have slowed to a crawl. Right now 73.44% of the country has received at least one shot, 67.05% are fully vaccinated. That's 83.55% of the population 12 and older, with 76.29% fully vaccinated. And we're slowly sliding down the world ranks, with Spain and Denmark passing us, among others. 

[JGP]

On 9/2/2021 at 6:42 PM, kairparavel said:

What will/would Cons do to move forward a BQ platform? Admittedly I've been out of the country long enough that I don't really know any party's platform. The BQ was formed by defectors from both Liberals and PC and aside from their separatist platform they also support causes or at least did, that align closer with the Liberals.

I'd think all they'd have to do is assert they'd be more hands off with provincial autonomy, especially with the no-strings health transfers and whatnot [which they've done, iirc] but that's an assumption. Quebec is hard for me to predict, honestly. A decade or more ago I figured the Bloc were done.  

[Fragile Bird]

I saw a story pop up that said the Conservative candidate running in the NWT has never visited the territory and lives in Thunder Bay. I guess Thunder Bay is far north enough and it’s a city well known for good relations with indigenous people. Oops. Far north enough, right? 
 

The Conservatives said that since it was a snap election they hadn’t had enough time to find a person in the NWT to run under their banner.

Oh. Okay.

[Aemon Stark]

Oh It was the same with the CPC candidate in my riding in 2019 - just some Campus Conservative type from Nova Scotia. This year they have a local candidate. And the Greens don’t have a single candidate in NL!

[Paxter]

I think politicians Canada wide should be ashamed of the lackadaisical vacc rollout in recent weeks.

As FB said, vacc rates are very low and these passports are coming too late and have too many loopholes (Ontario for example will allow unvaccinated ppl to dine on patios).

It’s a real shame as we needed that vacc firewall in place before the likely fall Delta surge. We’re still obviously in a better position than last September (and much better than our southern neighbour), but it’s kind of disheartening that we aren’t out of the woods yet. When we could be.

[Caligula_K3]

On 8/30/2021 at 2:25 PM, Fragile Bird said:

Listen, a lot of people are asking the question, so no, your reaction is shared by a lot of people.

On the other hand, I saw a panel member on CBC’s Power and Politics say the reaction is always the same when a minority government calls an election, because Canadians would rather have a root canal done than go through an election. On the bright side, we don’t do two years of electioneering like the Americans do, or four for presidential elections. Only 33 days!

The reason I'm especially frustrated this time is because the election was called in such a stupid way. I know they were planning for everyone to be happy in September: the vast majority double-vaccinated, COVID hopefully less and less of a crisis. But once it became clear that Delta was going to be a real problem and that we were in a rising fourth wave, the Liberals should have seriously reconsidered. The optics of calling an election right now are terrible.

And it's even worse because the Liberals were shockingly unprepared! They've been waiting to call this election for at least a year. The Conservatives and NDP had platforms available right away. The Liberals needed three weeks to get it together. Trudeau has no consistent message. And so here we are, two weeks before election day, with a real possibility of a Conservative government during the middle of a pandemic and after a long summer of climate crises.

[JGP]

Sure, but isn’t the Liberal platform the only one that’s actually been, you know, costed?

 

[Paxter]

Just to be a bit more cheery for a change - Ontario’s vacc rates went up this week after declining for many weeks.

Hopefully that continues and we can push up to 90% of eligibles fully vaccinated. That’s probably what it required to keep our ICUs under capacity over the next six months. We’re currently at 77% of eligibles.

[Fragile Bird]

I have talked about my anti-vaxxer SiL in the Covid threads, and you may get a laugh out of this. We have a decent Liberal MP in our riding, and they came by to ask if they could put a sign on their lawn, which my brother agreed to. On Saturday they called to ask if they could put one on mine (I was out when they walked the neighbourhood), and afterwards I took out my recycling and saw my brother’s lawn sign in the bin. (We live next door to each other.) I went over to ask my brother why he had done that. He laughed. He hadn’t done that, his wife is so fed up with Trudeau asking people to get vaccinated she just went out, grabbed the sign, and trashed it. Fuck you, Trudeau!

[Varysblackfyre321]

15 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

I have talked about my anti-vaxxer SiL in the Covid threads, and you may get a laugh out of this. We have a decent Liberal MP in our riding, and they came by to ask if they could put a sign on their lawn, which my brother agreed to. On Saturday they called to ask if they could put one on mine (I was out when they walked the neighbourhood), and afterwards I took out my recycling and saw my brother’s lawn sign in the bin. (We live next door to each other.) I went over to ask my brother why he had done that. He laughed. He hadn’t done that, his wife is so fed up with Trudeau asking people to get vaccinated she just went out, grabbed the sign, and trashed it. Fuck you, Trudeau!

Is she an anti-vaxxer?

[Caligula_K3]

1 hour ago, Paxter said:

Just to be a bit more cheery for a change - Ontario’s vacc rates went up this week after declining for many weeks.

Hopefully that continues and we can push up to 90% of eligibles fully vaccinated. That’s probably what it required to keep our ICUs under capacity over the next six months. We’re currently at 77% of eligibles.

90% of eligible is a pretty high goal, but I'm hoping most provinces, aka everywhere but the prairies, can get there, especially with the push of vaccine passports. A couple of provinces have passed the 80% fully vaccinated threshold now, and many are hovering between 85-90% with first doses. Even if we don't get to 90, I'm pretty impressed with vaccination rates across this country. Whether it's enough without 0-11 year olds being able to get the vaccine is another question... but hopefully it severely shortens this Delta wave, protects our hospitals, and leads to fewer bad outcomes from COVID.