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Canadian Politics: more than a truck load of covidiots, eh?


A Horse Named Stranger

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Sad this week to read that a young international student was shot dead (seemingly at random or in an attempted robbery) outside a subway station in downtown Toronto.

Homicides in a city of this size are unfortunately a fact of life, but it's just really upsetting to see a life cut cruelly short after coming to Canada with so many hopes and dreams. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

A good piece in the London Review of Books on the trucker occupation of Ottowa. 

Vol. 44 No. 8 · 21 April 2022, DIARY, "Nothing ever happens in Ottawa" by Richard Sanger. Sanger's a Canadian poet.

Nothing that hasn't been discussed here at the time, but nicely organized in terms of events and perceptions.

One does wonder where this money went:

Quote

 

... Tamara Lich, the key fundraiser and spokesperson for the truckers, is active in far-right politics and sings in a band in Medicine Hat, Alberta; during the protests, she was like a waitress counting her tips – except that she had millions in her hands (she also accepted crypto). ...

.... There were some very dark aspects to the occupation and many of them involved money. It’s what kept the whole thing going: diesel is expensive and if the truckers couldn’t run their big engines, they were going to get cold quickly and give up. The financial effort began with a crowdfunding campaign through various Christian and right-wing channels. Then came the big endorsements – Canadian conservatives, Ted Cruz, Elon Musk, Donald Trump – and money poured in. It turns out that Canadians, as well as Americans, tune into Fox News. On GoFundMe ten million dollars were raised in a matter of days. When GoFundMe froze the account, the organisers switched to the Christian platform GiveSendGo, which bypasses Canadian banks, and raised another $8.2 million. Hackers investigated and revealed that 55 per cent of the donations came from the US. Americans were directly funding a movement whose stated goal was to overthrow the democratically elected government of a neighbouring country. I doubt most of them could find Ottawa on a map. Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England, called it sedition. But the journalist Justin Ling, himself proprietor of a few choice internet rabbit holes, warned against the assumption that the arguments were imported along with the cash. ‘This extremist movement was born in Canada, raised in Canada and has proliferated in Canada.’ ....

 

 

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Man, my heart goes out to the families of the four Royal Military College cadets who met a cold death in Lake Ontario at 2:00 am. I am assuming drunkenness or drugs will be found to have played a role. Death is a pretty extreme punishment for teen stupidity, late teens or early 20s I guess. Sad.

eta: The four were 4th year students about to graduate and move on with their military careers. Celebration gone very wrong.

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15 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Man, my heart goes out to the families of the four Royal Military College cadets who met a cold death in Lake Ontario at 2:00 am. I am assuming drunkenness or drugs will be found to have played a role. Death is a pretty extreme punishment for teen stupidity, late teens or early 20s I guess. Sad.

eta: The four were 4th year students about to graduate and move on with their military careers. Celebration gone very wrong.

Very sad story.

Unrelated, I am still confused by how long it takes the major parties here to agree on a leader. Don’t get me wrong, I’m in no hurry to see that crazy guy get the Cons leadership, but I do think the Westminster system requires a strong Opposition and it just feels like Federal politics is dormant right now.

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4 hours ago, Paxter said:

Very sad story.

Unrelated, I am still confused by how long it takes the major parties here to agree on a leader. Don’t get me wrong, I’m in no hurry to see that crazy guy get the Cons leadership, but I do think the Westminster system requires a strong Opposition and it just feels like Federal politics is dormant right now.

The parties themselves decide how long of a campaign to run. Candidates who are not well known want a longer race so as to have more time for extra media coverage. The guy in the lead wants a short race before his past catches up to him.

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On 4/30/2022 at 1:20 PM, maarsen said:

The parties themselves decide how long of a campaign to run. Candidates who are not well known want a longer race so as to have more time for extra media coverage. The guy in the lead wants a short race before his past catches up to him.

Feels like the parties themselves then are pressing pause on democracy. Get on with it!

ETA: We have ludicrously short election cycles back home (three years), so I’m accustomed to more breakneck pace.

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This might be a bit of a concern.

Quote
  2021Q1 2022Q1
  Canada Canada
  Quantity Quantity
Insects; live, queen bees, in packages 8781 7236
Insects; live, queen bees, other than in packages 171 0
Insects; live, bees other than queen bees 25344000 0

What do these figures represent? New Zealand export of live bees to Canada between January and March 2021 vs 2022.

For those not agriculturally minded, live bees going to Canada late winter/early spring is all about re-population for crop pollination in the spring. One might optimistically say that maybe the winter die off wasn't so bad. However I have heard that Canadian importers in the bee trafficking game are rather concerned at having not received a single worker bee before the start of spring. And part way into Q2 it sounds like we haven't started making up the Q1 shortfall. The window for getting the bees in to do their job is closing. I wonder if a potential bee shortage has made it into the media yet in Canada. Not being able to get optimal pollination coverage in Canada has possible food shortage implications, and not just for Canadians. Honey being the least of those concerns.

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You know, the other great piece that came out of the Junos was his intro to Shawn Mendesvand then Shawn’s speech about knowing your own self worth. He’s had some down days and struggled with depression and that was a great speech. I’ll try to dig it up and add it later.

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1 hour ago, Paxter said:

Is this a case of being careful what we wish for, though?

It seems like one of the reasons for the slim margin is that Kenney "wasn't a real conservative."

I guess he didn't alienate enough of Alberta to be a real conservative. 

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2 hours ago, Paxter said:

Is this a case of being careful what we wish for, though?

It seems like one of the reasons for the slim margin is that Kenney "wasn't a real conservative."

I don't live in Alberta anymore, not as invested in provincial politics as much as I used to be, but as awful as Kenney was for the province, he's moderate compared plenty in the UCP. My concern is how this could play out for the 23 election [might help the UCP, actually] but that's a ways away and who knows.

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Yeah Kenney always struck me as fairly moderate, for all of his missteps.

Speaking of provincial politics, Ford is all but guaranteed a win in a couple of weeks. Bleh. But overall he probably gets a pass mark for COVID management, so it would be a surprise to see him axed after one term. 

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Kenney tore up healthcare contracts, is underfunding and attacking health care, is also underfunding education [the proposed new curriculum is horribad] cuts to the safety net for the vulnerable, and supports for the LGBQT+; under his direction the UCP deregulated broad scale, dislikes union and labor, criminally slashed the business tax, underfunded municipalities so property taxes went up, the list is long and goes on.

And, all of that fish wrapped in his understated but Dominionist type ideology. The dude sucks ass.  So, I meant moderate in comparison to the social conservative element within the UCP.

Kinda of gives an idea of the polity skew between Alberta and Ontario when a largish portion of Conservative minded MLAs seem to agree that Kenney maybe didn't go far enough.

 

 

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And now, despite resigning last night, he’s staying on as Premier until a new leader is elected. 
 

United Clownshoe Party.

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Quite a few cases of monkeypox now suspected over in QC (a couple of dozen). Will be interesting (and potentially concerning) to see how things go from here (e.g. whether there is any exponential rise in cases). On the plus side, most people over 50 should have a decent amount of protection from the smallpox vacc. Plus there is apparently the possibility of vaccinating close contacts of confirmed cases. 

I do worry a bit about the effects on my community given that current cases seem to be largely across gay/bi men. 

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