Old & Corrupted: Canadian Politics 2024-25

a new hopefully Zing-friendly thread

Weirdly, since this thread was begun, the old one now loads in Zing. I’m guessing witchcraft is at work.

After the 2021 election, my one staunch conservative friend and I were talking politics (as we inevitably do, despite our goodwill attempts to avoid it) and I said that Trudeau was going to try to contest the next election because his massive ego wouldn’t let him bow out gracefully; he would have to be crushed into the ground by an opponent or forcibly chucked out by the party (which would never do so). My friend expressed surprise and said I was the only person he’d met that thought that, besides Ben Mulroney (these are the circles he frequents on the 364 days a year when he’s not slumming it with me) — that everyone he knew expected Trudeau to step down as leader as soon as a suitable replacement could be found, since the dude was so obviously done, as in nobody was voting for him, just against the Conservatives. Yet here we are. Wildly unpopular, deeply ineffectual, inspiring nobody, and committed to fucking running again, banking on the hope that Pollievre is so distasteful to us that we’ll hold our nose and swallow a medicine spoonful of Trudeau yet again.

A reasonable leader would have set the party free to groom an inspiring successor well before any election talk was in the air. But nOoooo…

When PM Alt-right Milhouse is in power, I hope JT at least has the sense of shame that it’s his fault, and that it haunts him haggard. (This will be small comfort for the rest of us, suffering under an austerity budget, rights and liberties being curtailed, and federal services and infrastructure being sold off to Telus and Shopify.)

What I still don't really get is why people's understandable fatigue with JT and the Liberals necessarily means a turn to lite fascism. I'm familiar with this routine pendulum swing in other contexts, but I moved here in 2014 when the NDP was on the cusp of majority viability and I'm still confused about what happened to stifle that. (tbf I can't even come close to understanding what people see in conservatism these days, so the problem isn't really my ignorance)

Not that I disagree with the point that JT's vanity is a disaster for us all!

Layton had some magic about him, I can’t think of it any other way than that. He talked about love being a primary motivating force in politics and somehow didn’t sound like a hippie! If he hadn’t died, I wouldn’t at all be surprised if he’d have become our first NDP PM.

And now we’d all probably be sick of him too, moaning about how disappointed we are that he didn’t live up to his promise. Ah, but maybe not…

Heard on CBC radio that there are Liberal MPs who are calling Poilievre weird. Maybe a little too transparent? Strange, flaky, peculiar--there are other words that work.

Canadians don’t have an original thought in our heads when it comes to politics.

that peculiar Pierre

I suppose the Liberals might have trouble going after him with "phony" but that's my main impression, and if they keep doing stuff like this maybe it would stick? https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/20/canada-conservatives-video-other-countries

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-imeR4n9PU

“Weird” works because it points out how fucked up the maga worldview is and delegitimizes it all in one swell foop. I wish there was another word, one that meant “weird and boring and unoriginal and an opportunistic hack and a dweeb and a conman and a tryhard and someone you do fucking well not want running the goddamn country.”

In other news, hey BC can you get your head out of your ass? Every other province who votes in the conservatives has voted in DEEP FUCKING PROBLEMS with them, don’t be stupid.

yeah this shit's getting scary with the BC United/Libs pulling out today

and the BC Conservatives are definitely the Polievre/Danielle Smith version, not the Ford nation types or the PCs

Interesting development: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/liberal-staffers-gaza-montreal-byelection-1.7306984

I went back and found this post i made in the 2020 Canadian politics thread

so uh are the BC Liberals even going to exist by the end of this election

― josh az (2011nostalgia), Thursday, October 15, 2020 5:21 PM (three years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Only took just under four years but this finally came true

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/jagmeet-singh-ndp-ending-agreement-1.7312910

I'm getting nervous.

Are the NDP in any position to benefit from a sudden election?

Couldn't say, though I'm sure someone far more knowledgable on the subject can. Just dreading P.P.

Are the NDP in any position to benefit from a sudden election?

I could see some typical liberal voters going to the NDP if they think the Liberal party is a lost cause. There is nothing in the polls indicating something like that is going to happen though, it seems like all ex-liberal voters are going the other way.

weird how Jagmeet is not giving any clear explanation for ending the agreement now. There's nothing about it until the end of the article:

On Tuesday, NDP labour critic Matthew Green said the NDP has been re-evaluating the deal since Labour Minister Steve MacKinnon directed the Canada Industrial Relations Board to impose binding arbitration less than 24 hours after Canadian Pacific Kansas City and Canadian National Railway locked out their workers after failing to reach a deal at the bargaining table.

"After Sellout Singh did this stunt today, he is going to have to vote on whether he keeps Justin Trudeau's costly government in power, or whether he triggers a carbon tax election."

Right then, let's all talk like we're back in the schoolyard.

Shut up Skippy, you dirty taint.

lord knows I don't know what regular Canadians think about anything tbrr, but is the carbon tax really such a hot issue that "carbon tax election" is a thing anyone other than PP will get juiced about?

We have an encampment 15 minutes west of town at a prominent gas station. They will be protesting the carbon tax until they all die of old age, even if skippy scraps it.

There’s so much fucked about this ginned-up outrage about the carbon levy, but the thing that gets me is that if PP was to scrap it, our exports would drop by like 40% overnight, since so many of our biggest trading partners have requirements about this. So the Cons will get in, then after a review they will keep the levy, and everyone will be absolutely fine with that.

Fuck this country North America humanity right now.

"Sellout Singh"--the anxiety of influence.

Pollievre has no anxiety about it at all. He’s like “It worked for the orange guy, it’ll work here” and sleeps posturepedic-soundly every night.

Oh, I know--just granting such transparent imitation pseudo-loftiness.

I sincerely hope the Dems CRUSH the US election & go hard on “neighbourly” social programs and that takes the wind out of PP’s pseudo-sails & puts _some_ in the NDP’s at least. I’m sure that fear-calculus is beeping in PP’s little lizard brain & is at least half the reason he’d love Singh to trigger an election this fall.

If I were Singh, the taunt that I was triggering “a carbon tax election” would be enough to keep me from doing so quite decisively. But I’m petty like that.

oups: https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/government-should-remove-more-than-330-names-on-victims-of-communism-memorial-because-of-potential-nazi-or-fascist-links-report-recommends

The Department of Canadian Heritage is being told that more than half of the 550 names on the Memorial to the Victims of Communism should be removed because of potential links to the Nazis or questions about affiliations with fascist groups, according to government records.

As originally planned, there were to be 553 entries on the Ottawa memorial’s Wall of Remembrance.

Highly unlikely that any on the proposed list were Canadian so why are we even going to that detail? I'd hoped that the Libs during their tenure would've sunk this sketchy Harper-based project but it appears that they managed to fail at this too.

good luck British Columbia

John Rustad's internet conspiracy brainrot, a thread #bcpoli pic.twitter.com/U524GYPTpW

— Matt Hannah (@mattjdh) October 19, 2024

Was just looking at a "FB memory" where, nine years ago today, I decided I cared more about baseball than Canadian politics because I decided Jays-win (in the ALCS vs. the Royals; Jays were down 2-0)/Harper-wins was preferable to Jays-lose/Harper-loses. This is still pre-Trump; if it came down to the same situation today but with our Trump acolyte running...elimination loss, I'd still go with the Jays; otherwise, I think I'd take the Jays loss, but honestly I'm not sure.

respectfully, that's insane

now if there was something important like a Canucks cup on the line, maybe I'd feel differently

I had second thoughts as soon as I posted...There's an unstated and quite probably naive belief there that we'd just get a pale, Canadian version of Trump--that ours could never be close to as destructive as the real thing. But that's not a risk worth taking, I realize.

(And hometown sports fandom has insanity as a given.)

Haha, my own FB memory for today in 2015 was changing my wallpaper to a really pouty photo of Harper's face

I know Trump has me already misremembering Harper as a Romney-type when he was in fact harder right.

Oh yeah, Harper was proto-fasc. The war on science and the media; the appeal to "old stock" Cdns, the military parades at hockey games, and that's only that which I can still immediately remember.

Pretty sure he “consults” actual fascists now too.

My memories of Mike Harris--his hatred of teachers, and how he got a sizeable part of the public to go along with him on that--are sharper and more personal.

a pale, Canadian version of Trump--that ours could never be close to as destructive as the real thing

i recall wondering how the hell rob ford happened, and then

looks like BC is ending up with one of the strangest possible results yeesh

the conversation above is bringing back traumatic memories of the brief moment in 2011 when a Jack Layton government and Vancouver Canucks Stanley Cup were somehow within reach

my thinking was that the Jays already won two World Series in our lifetime, so the joy you would experience from just a playoff series win wouldn't really compare to the permanent damage PP is going to cause

You're right--myopic comment based on memories of how awful I felt when the Jays bowed out in 2015.

rob ford was the harbinger of "yes, i smoke crack but why do you think that disqualifies me or requires me to resign" style of politics

so we're planning a population decline to, allegedly, tackle the housing crisis, amazing: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/new-immigration-levels-plan-1.7361972

Postal strike. From CBC:

What does this mean for letters to Santa?

CBC News has contacted Canada Post and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) about Canada Post's holiday tradition. The corporation responded with an email saying the strike has "impacted Canadians, small businesses, as well as our ability to get mail to and from Santa in the North Pole."

smart to include a blatant lie in your official response to a strike

I'm a unionized teacher, so 100% pro-union, but above and beyond that, throwing in "from"--not only can't your kids send letters, they won't get gifts.

obviously the whole process of negotiating with trump is fraught and insane, and it's smart (strategically) to spin it for political spin. and as i said we should be retaliating. but they are 100% spinning it. like dropping that quebec culture line during the chicoutitimi byelection. and then it turns out it was a reference to platform taxes and regs they had previously described as on the table

I just read about the BQ being pissed with Carney for his spin on the negotiations. Not so fun when someone else is exploiting Quebec grievances huh!

This headline:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-nova-scotia-energy-minister-resigns-over-offensive-rap-lyrics/

I don't want to downplay the impact of the trade war, but having this arch-neoliberal banker with only one idea in power right now sucks. How will privatizing the airports help? We're going to save Canada by selling our infrastructure to foreign, including possibly American, investors?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/carney-airport-private-investment-9.7344327

yeah, I can't imagine the privatization of airports is a popular idea and it looks like he is using his high approval rating due to the trade war to push these kinds of things through. He is equivalent or possibly worse than Stephen Harper was.

I only caught the last bit of the Harper reign, did he also demonize foreign people as economic drains while welcoming foreign capital with open arms? (I assume yes he did)

He definitely did the former.

Yes to both. Harpo opened the doors wide to Chinese investment (cf. the FIPA ratification in 2014).

Carney demonized immigrants as economic drains?

Blamed them for the housing crisis at any rate

"Middle powers must act together because if we're not at the table, we're on the menu." was pretty good

― FRAUDULENT STEAKS (The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall), Wednesday, January 21, 2026 7:31 AM (seven months ago) bookmarkflaglink

leads to the inevitable: "Looks like (insert isolated middle power nation here) is back on the menu boys!"

― FRAUDULENT STEAKS (The Cursed Return of the Dastardly Thermo Thinwall), Wednesday, January 21, 2026 7:43 AM (seven months ago) bookmarkflaglink

I have thought "looks like middle powers are back on the menu" so many times since reading this

lol

I thought it was pretty funny that one of the articles I read earlier about the EU associate (nice to know we'll be hired with tenure) thing quoted an EU official insisting the EU is not a middle power

Well......

yep

i guess i'm a pessimist and expect some yeses but i doubt separatism wins

in not completely unrelated news, Vancouver shifted left, i wasn't sure that was gonna happen, but the results are amazing across the various boards, the crypto mayor is gone and we now have our first Green mayor. the progressives took over everything, the city council, the school board, the park board. Sean Orr (who our former mayor tried to smear by claiming he sold drugs at xmas - yes, it was weird) got reelected with more votes than the former mayor.

i was shopping on saturday and passed a patio where Pete Fry, the Green mayor candidate, our new mayor, was just sitting down for lunch, so i shouted "hope you win!l" and he smiled and thanked me. saw him once at a dim sum place too.

ken sim can eat shit

crazy how the Greens did this without a budget, you saw big ABC signs up everywhere including in front of houses under construction. Our next door neighbors' landlord forced them to put up a big sign, they put a little Pete Fry sign up in the window. The ABC sign blew over a couple days before the election, must have been an omen.

you know, just when i gave up on this city it pulls something like this <3

but then i was in a line to get orr elected for over two hours during the byelection, and i thought people's determination to vote was remarkable and a bad omen for ABC. Ken did not read the room

and feels like overall less craziness across BC?

yeah I really thought ABC had the money to get their voters out. I read this Straight article predicting a Fry win and a progressive takeover and thought it was way too optimistic:

https://www.straight.com/city-culture/predicting-2026-vancouver-municipal-election

Ken Sim shut up about crypto and tried to project a more serious air after that by-election, but he ran a shitty and cynical re-election campaign. trashing the city he's been running for four years and releasing an ad that will live on in infamy crying about COPE's "evict ken sim" buttons

hate to say it but I think this week is the happy interregnum before the right takes over the province, David Eby has also failed massively to read the room.

alberta can't even run a referendum and they want to be a whole-ass country smh

Is it really corny to feel good about this? Never been there, don't know anybody there, but I'm glad the country remains intact.

I don't think it's corny. Alberta seceding would have been a nightmare, and I'm not just saying that because I live in Quebec

Some Anglophone friends who lived in Québec in 1995 had a spontaneous rendition of "Oh Canada" when those referendum results came through.

yeah I'm not exactly patriotic, but no one has ever been able to explain the advantages of Quebec independence. The closest I've heard is creating a utopian socialist state that sounds wonderful on paper, but is laughably deluded if you take two seconds to think about who comprises the political majority here and what their values are. I still voted QS a few weeks ago, as there is literally no other non-neoliberal (or worse) choice, but I'm hoping the PQ taking over might pull them off the idiotic cliff they've put themselves on by embracing a referendum. Though even then they're not getting anywhere near power without some fundamental changes to QC political consciousness.

my GF is from Alberta and still owns property there, her parents live there, etc... she just rolled her eyes when I asked about the independence supporters... I gather she doesn't know any!

maybe it doesn't make sense for a province reliant on pipelines to become a landlocked country, who knows

the results for the other referendum questions are predictably awful, though the questions seem manipulatively worded

I'm from Alberta and there are probably some separatists among my former schoolmates and extended family, but I don't make a habit of talking to any of them to confirm. Friends and close family think the referendum is ridiculous.

A referendum on whether to have a referendum sounds vaguely Seinfeld-ish.

I just figured out why: it's a coffee table book about coffee tables.

yeah all my anglo friends who moved here from other provinces vote qs cause it's like the closest thing to ndp but don't really understand or follow politics here. i'm like, you know they voted for bill 96 right? and they will likely vote with the pq to extend bill 101 to cegeps? to which they invariably reply "what's bill 96?"

oof lol, though I can sympathize to an extent with being baffled by QC politics and letting the language barrier keep you in blissful ignorance

they will likely vote with the pq to extend bill 101 to cegeps

QS never said this officially though right? I will admit I don't know if they were asked or not, and I'm not disputing your prediction. It would be pretty galling given how progressive their education platform is if they voted to do this without any concessions on higher ed austerity etc., but idk

i didn't think they would, but we were talking about whether the pq would get the votes for it given the minority at lunch today and my quebecois colleagues were all like "eh a few people from qs will vote with them". my understanding is that the zanetti faction are much more hardcore than the ghazal faction

ok yeah that kind of detail is lost on me. I'm not even sure how to learn about internal QS factions. Meanwhile my (QS) MNA is Roxane Milot who worked for the federal government for 15 years—maybe that's meaningless, but I can't imagine she's that rabid a sovereignist

that was a bit misleading. there's not really any meaningful faction split anymore. but my read is that zanetti is the most extreme nationalist, ghazal less so. the other MNAs are harder to place. boulerice obviously the least nationalist

zanetti and ghazal were originally the same faction. they were the nationalist-left wing, in opposition with the gabriel nadeau-dubois faction which was both less nationalist and wanted to take the party in a more center-left direction in order to try to win more seats

zanetti joined QS when they merged with option nationale in 2018. ON were the hardcore separatist wing of the pq that split off. in 2023, ghazal ran for nomination, was the most separatist and was supported by the ON faction, but lost narrowly to émilise lessard-therrien. but then ELT resigned abruptly for health reasons, while criticizing gabriel nadeau-dubois, and ghazal ran unopposed and won. then when GND dropped out zanetti won the race for his replacement (beating étienne grandmont of the GND faction)

ghazal supported extending bill 101 to private unsubsidized schools (which imo is worse than extending to cegep, since after the CAQ's reforms it is basically impossible for francophones to attend english cegeps anyways) and to business with under 10 employees. but they campaigned against it this election. they vote as a bloc so probably they would trade it for another concession and there would be some intense internal discussions

I don't love QS's language positions but there's a lot more that's more important in this province, and I disagree with anglophones who find those politics disqualifying.

well worth reading their independence doc from a couple years ago:
https://www.nouveauquebec.info/

xp thanks flopson, very helpful

xp people can vote however they want, but everyone knew this election was either going to be a pq minority or majority, and every additional qs mna is one more person who would potentially vote with pq on language and sovereignty. it sucks that those issues dominate but until they don't, we can't just wish them away

fwiw half my education was in the french public school system, i'm fluent in the language, teach at a french university, so i am not personally affected by things like bill 96. i just oppose it for ethical reasons, and for that reason would not touch the current incarnation of qs with a ten-foot pole

all my lefty anglo friends live in the plateau/mile end though, so i tell them to just vote their hearts. me + the whole west side of the island got your backs :)

So Toronto seems reasonable?

We'd welcome you here, Ned

My wife, who had been going out knocking on doors, was especially pleased that our progressive councillor candidate finally got elected on her third try against a seemingly-eternal incumbent. Of course we're also happy that Yon Yonson was kept out of the mayoral seat.

I had three friends running here in St. Marys: two for council, one for mayor. The two got in for council, but the other just got crushed in the mayoral race, 2,400-400. Feel genuinely bad for him--politics at its most humbling. It's a small town, and he still has to live here.

Ottawa was a wave of incumbents, as usual. Leiper was so beneficial for Hintonburg/Westboro so it's disappointing that we won't see how he might've worked for the entire city. Sutcliffe did nothing of merit in his first term as mayor and will likely continue to do the same for the next four years

And everyone knows what happened here in Vancouver :)

too bad about what happened in BC! bracing myself for how much this Conservative term will suck

If the Democrats win both houses tonight, that won't make a difference re tarriffs, will it?

my guess is no. trump doesn't rely on congress for tariffs, and would veto any restriction on tariffs

Too lazy to do any research, but that's pretty much what I was thinking.

This government seems criminally stupid and short-sighted? (or maybe it's just old and corrupted)