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.

jfc. beyond revolting.

Not surprised the Cons pulled this, because they haven’t got an original thought between them all, but the fact the Libs went along with it is repulsive.

the whole grotesque spectacle was revolting, but the most shameful part? the "family values" dogwhistle.

"The most successful ad in the history of North America"--like horror-film mythology, where to slay the monster requires that you sound exactly like the monster.

oh thought this was going to be about Danielle Smith and the UCP invoking the notwithstanding clause to force teachers back to work and trample on their Charter rights

I wonder if we'll see a union defy one of these back-to-work orders, or maybe some kind of mass resignation action. Not that I'm advocating that, just wondering what it means for the future that governments can force you to work under conditions they unilaterally impose

I’m hoping for a general strike

sorry, weird memory lapse there, obviously Air Canada workers did defy the fed govt's order. hopefully the teachers the same

The difference being that the AB gov’t will fine anyone who defies the order $500

True. I think why I forgot about AC is that it didn't seem like the feds had given any thought to what happens if the strikers tell them to get fucked.

ugh: https://www.policyalternatives.ca/news-research/post-election-budget-could-plunge-canada-into-another-federal-election/

Tory policy without the accompanying rhetoric

I expect some if not all of the NDP MP's will abstain

it's amazing that i see the odd right wing propaganda that makes it's way into my feed and it's still calling these guys "radical leftists" etc. like no wonder people are leaving the (conservative) party

I'm moving that Nov. 1 be declared a day of national mourning forever more.

xp I wonder what the argument for the Tories not supporting this budget is going to be. Is it somehow too woke?

Would be funny if this fails, triggers an election, and then the Liberals have to explain why anyone should vote for them over the CP, knowing full well a vote for them is a vote for tax cuts for the rich, oil, and an unjustifiable and deranged inflation of defence spending. (not saying they'd suffer a huge loss necessarily)

Honestly not sure what the downside to that would be...apart from the NDP not currently having a leader, yeesh

xp November 1 or 4?

I'm pretty sure the Blue Jays lost on November 1

Ah right

Liberals now just one seat away from a majority. I guess slowly absorbing and becoming the conservative party is one way to form a majority government in this country.

I’ll take red Tory liberals over cuckoo bananas maple maga conservatives any day.

I realize that’s sort of an oversimplification of things when we have a proper left wing party - but until we fix fptp, it’s the dichotomy we’re stuck with.

oh for sure, but I kind of wish the Liberals decided to go left and poach NDP MPs to form a majority, but I know that wasn't going to happen with Carney

anwyay, I figure this is also going to likely result in Poilievre losing his job as leader of the conservative party. Considering that I was pretty much resigned to having him as prime minister a year ago, it feels very much like we dodged a bullet there.

eehhhh... your faith might be misplaced there. they seem to slime their way further right every time they pick a new leader.
"Oh no! Canadians find us repulsive! Quick – let's not change anything at all, but instead to it harder!"

That is definitely a possibility, still, having one slimebag out of the way is a good thing, even if replaced by another slimebag. I don't keep track of internal conservative party politics and don't care to so have no idea who is up and coming in that party, but we'll see soon enough.

i do somewhat, just so i'm ready for whatever crazy they throw at us. i remember one leadership contest they had (the one before PP), one of the candidates said they had to acknowledge climate change if they wanted to be taken seriously – and he got laughed off the stage.

yeah it's been demoralizing to slowly realize how fptp means the political situation here isn't that much different from two-party USA, or at least that has become the case. (in my defence, I moved here in 2014 when it seemed like there were several viable parties and the situation was clearly superior to the US)

I'd like to hope that PP stepping down would only increase the CP's loser stink, but normalizing their increasingly unhinged beliefs is def bad.

I thought this was an interesting run-down: https://pressprogress.ca/a-year-of-government-interference-in-collective-bargaining/

rot in hell you evil fuck: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/legault-resigns-ahead-of-provincial-election-9.7044929

I'm ignorant about Quebec provincial politics, what makes Legault particularly evil? All the secularisme bullshit?

IMO, it's that he managed to combine the worst of two political worlds: ruthless permanent austerity neoliberalism + xenophobia, fake securalism, and disingenuous cultural pandering to nationalists. I don't want Quebec to secede from Canada, but I have (very slightly) more respect for that political project than the CAQ's, which deeply undermined some of what is actually unique about Quebec while reducing so much of politics to empty culture-war spectacles for the base. And taking it personally: the party has greatly degraded higher ed in the province and particularly targeted the anglo unis, which may have direct impact on my life.

I don't have a sense of what a PQ govt would look like (I am not hopeful) or if voters will somehow run back to the PLQ, but if Legault managed to destroy the CAQ, I'll take that as a win.

but if Legault managed to destroy the CAQ, I'll take that as a win.

I mean the CAQ pretty much was Legault, it's not so much that he managed to destroy it but rather that it can't really exist without him. Anyway, I'm also happy he's gone, for pretty much the reasons listed above, though I don't particularly care for PSPP (the likely winner next election) either, there really aren't any good options in the next election.

that's true about "destroy" though if he hadn't run last time, I think the party prob could have continued without him? I don't really understand why, but the CAQ had a lot of goodwill coming out of the pandemic

not sure if accurate but my impression is that pspp's pq is even more anti-immigration than caq has been

I'm getting so many emails from the federal NDP leadership race, I wish they would all shut up

I unsubscribed to them all. How long have they been campaigning for, it feels like a goddamn year now.

the vote's not until the end of March!

If Canada is moving its auto sector to China then Canadian auto workers should get first crack at those jobs. 53 year old Gord from Windsor moving to Guangzhou to work for BYD.

— Don Hughes (@getfiscal) January 16, 2026

Mark Carney’s Davos speech goes viral, it seems

definitely an interesting speech. grim that domestically all he offers is vintage neoliberalism ("Since my government took office, we have cut taxes on incomes, on capital gains and business investment. We have removed all federal barriers to interprovincial trade. We are fast-tracking a trillion dollars of investment in energy, AI, critical minerals, new trade corridors and beyond.") not quite sure what I think about his vision in the rest of the speech, but I suppose his "honesty" is refreshing on some level

You cannot live within the lie of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination.

https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSdx4Ongdag9S24fGJnW78EAdp7B2o5IOfllRaVfIK8Hg&s

lmao

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

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

An ok comment piece on Carney's speech.

https://www.un-diplomatic.com/p/rupture-not-transition-canadas-pm

When the world is a circus, Canada needs a Carney ❤️‍🔥

— Brooks Otterlake (@i_zzzzzz) March 10, 2025

Obviously his speech totally ruled, but this was part of why he was so speedily elected, he’s good with words. Invoking Havel several times in that context was an interesting choice.

NYT coverage of this speech is very interesting, too— the writers touch on just how intensely integrated (nigh intractable) the economies of US and Canada have become— especially our military forces.

I don’t fully understand why right wing nationalist leaders— and obvious demons like Trump— have been winning elections in recent years. I read articles theorizing certain explanations but I feel like this might be a by-product of something else

I’m sure that the rise of social media is a huge factor— moderation looks weak in an outrage economy

i'd say the growing enshitification of the business world too, is doing us all in. more media being owned by fewer and fewer oligarchs, who grow wealthier and wealthier. more businesses with disproportionately deeper pockets pushing back on anything that can cost them a cent - environmental regulations, fair wages, consumer protections... all being eroded in an environment where profits are sought out at the expense of regular people, employees etc. the best way to do that is to shift power away from people, away from voters. push for right wing governments that have no issues letting business take advantage of people, no issues eroding democratic institutions in oder to centralize power away from the unwashed masses that would otherwise affect their bottom lines. keep them distracted, keep them divided and outraged and make outlandish profits without being questioned.

ding ding ding