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.

and then there was the Hamilton cop who was let off the hook for having "nazi co-opted symbolism" on his personal jeep. this was AFTER he's already been in trouble for sharing racist shit online.
his salary is around $120,000.

"if we didn't hire nazis we'd be short on staff"

but hey, a prince george symphony orchestra operations manager had been fired for attending a white suprematist convention. i'm sure she'll find a new job in a police department somewhere

so the liberals did it, with this latest crossover from the NDP and very likely winning at least 2 out of 3 byelections in April, they will have a majority government.

I missed that the Supreme Court forced a revote in one riding, seems like the right call

I like the framing in this article about Canadian foundations:

https://breachmedia.ca/canada-super-rich-private-foundations-to-funnel-huge-public-sums-to-elite-universities-and-israel/

Rather the money in these stockpiles is money for which the wealthy donors have received major tax concessions, depriving the country of revenue. This means that much of the money in these foundations is really taken from the public purse; it is public money. In making a donation to its foundation, a wealthy family is putting in some of its own money, along with some public money (often, mostly public money). The family then gets to effectively control all the funds in its foundation, distributing them to the charitable causes of its choice, when and if it chooses. This is an extraordinary amount of power over what amounts to a great deal of public money.

https://www.culturealberta.com/articles/alberta-independence-petition-organizers-say-theyve-hit-the-177000-signature-threshold

unverified but looks like the Alberta referendum is going to happen

If the petition clears verification, Albertans would be asked: "Do you agree that the Province of Alberta should cease to be a part of Canada to become an independent state?"

pretty funny to say "state" and not "nation" -- maybe there are legal reasons I'm unaware of?

good luck Alberta

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/conservative-mp-marilyn-gladu-crosses-floor-to-liberals-9.7156167

this person seems objectively batshit though?

https://globalnews.ca/news/3893335/conservative-marilyn-gladu-anti-pot-poem/

poets are now the acknowledged legislators of Canada

her riding has been conservative by huge margins for 20 years....I'm happy that we won't have another federal election anytime soon, but I don't get the calculation behind these Tory switches. Especially for this Ivermectin-pushing crackpot. Are they getting spooked by polls showing 250 seats for Carney or something?

Reminds me of airhead conservatwink Sam Oosterhoff's Weird Al move from a few years back:

We stopped the tax! (We stopped the carbon tax) @fordnation @RodPhillips01 pic.twitter.com/YczQL2jmBv

— Sam Oosterhoff (@samoosterhoff) October 31, 2018

none of these people are the next Ezra Pound

Except maybe in the sense of being essentially Nazis.

the glorious Carney majority is here, 11 and a half months after the last federal election. Guess those byelection margins are why Tories are scurrying from the Polievre ship.

Wasn’t there some kind of shenanigans with the last CPC leadership review? That can’t be helping things

Secularism means not worshipping the false idol of knowing stuff: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-secularism-law-schools-9.7165798

Montreal's largest school service centre loses more than 100 support staff due to new secularism law

I'm almost impressed by Carney's dedication to fresh, bold "have we tried neoliberalizing?" approach to governing

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/how-will-airport-privatization-impact-travel-9.7189042

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/guilbeault-resigning-as-mp-9.7212835

Guilbeault is my MP, so I have some small hope that this could end up an NDP pick-up removed from the context of a national election.

Interesting (to my non-fluent ears) interview here: https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/2256879/steven-guilbeault-depart-politique-carney-valeurs

it really feels more and more that the conservatives actually did win the 2025 election

yeah I think we've been spared some god awful culture war nonsense, but policy-wise this govt is deeply right-wing

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/carney-new-york-speech-9.7214907

lmao okay man consider me sufficiently pranked at this point

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/bill-c-30-changes-pesticide-use-pest-control-products-act-9.7240832

Carney government passes law allowing authorization of banned pesticides

Bill C-30 gives cabinet power to greenlight use for economic or food security reasons

...

The pesticide industry has previously praised Canada's health minister for her "bold action" it says will modernize pesticide rules.

The day Bill C-30 was introduced, Michel spoke at an event hosted by CropLife Canada, the major organization representing pesticide companies. The next day, she touted in a speech that she was the first health minister to do so.

The lobby registry also shows Michel met with CropLife in December and January. Roy Karam, her political adviser, has met with CropLife four times this year.

Michel's spokesperson defended the meetings and pointed to past comments made by the agricultural sector commending the proposed pesticide changes.

very cool transparent corruption

just like the defunct BC Liberals, they're liberals in the name only. they're shifting so much right, they're forcing the Cons to shift left (by the virtue of opposing everything Liberals do)

How do you see the Cons moving left? Not disputing you, I don't really have any idea, but I read this yesterday which suggests otherwise: https://breachmedia.ca/inside-canadas-conservative-identity-crisis/

oh, i think there is definitely similar (to the US) radicalization of conservatives (and Conservatives) happening because of the Liberals adopting the right wing agenda items. i was mostly being facetious but the two examples that do come to mind are the push by a Conservative MP to legalize psychedelics and the pushback against the surveillance bill - taking a position that would be entirely opposite to what the Cons would do if they were pushing a similar bill.

Going to cost us a few billion in tarrifs, evidently.

https://i.postimg.cc/sf8SCBCX/soccer.jpg

(Wildfires? Maybe, but I bet this is the real reason.)

(Or tariffs.)

I've grown accustomed to the specific strain of Canadian denialism about racism, but this earns some kind of special prize:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/david-henschel-swiss-national-sentenced-for-striking-anti-war-protester-9.7278937

Swiss man who assaulted protester in Ottawa gets absolute discharge

...

Henschel, 58, was an employee of Swiss munitions firm Rheinmetall Waffe Munition Schweiz AG when he attended the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries (CANSEC) conference in May 2024.

Court previously heard that as Henschel walked toward Ottawa’s EY Centre he interacted with several protesters, one of whom yelled that he was "racist."

"I'm a f---ing racist and I'm proud of it," Henschel replied, according to an agreed statement of facts the judge read in court Wednesday.

As he continued walking, Henschel encountered a 21-year-old woman in a hijab who told him he was "actively supporting genocide" by attending the conference.

Henschel swung his arm, intentionally backhanding the protester in the face with a closed fist. As the woman dropped to the ground, Henschel continued walking toward the conference centre, pushing another protester before police stepped in and arrested him.

He pleaded guilty to assault in court last year.

...

In delivering his sentence, Justice Boxall said he totally rejects that's Henschel's actions were racially motivated.

“This was an emotional situation. Mr. Henschel failed to control his emotions, but that does not make it motivated by hate," said the judge, who described the attack as a "situational and one-time event."

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/jun/10/canadian-journalist-sacked-in-scandal-involving-art-sale-to-mark-carney

TIL our AI minister and our PM have a history

https://www.ctvnews.ca/toronto/politics/queens-park/article/trump-threatens-to-change-name-of-lake-ontario-amid-ongoing-trade-dispute/

The full tweet is pretty funny. "Giving serious consideration"...Much as I'm giving serious consideration to moving in with Dakota Johnson; I just haven've quite reached a decision yet.

Love that we're going full Moe Greene here.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/25/business/canada-us-tariffs-american-consumers

(Says the movie fan in me; the clueless economist has no idea if this is suicidal or not.)

Carney's speech on Saturday after the talks broke down was fantastic, I thought.

yeah he's good at speeches

ok tbf as much as I dislike him, I'm very glad he defied trump. and like clemenza I can't claim to understand trade policy well enough to know if retaliating is actually smart or not, but it is satisfying

it was smart to retaliate imo. it will probably cause some economic pain but not clear if it's gonna be that much; the 50% tariffs only apply to like 3% of gross exports. worth it to the price to on principle. trump/lutnick will probably escalate and then de-escalate

fwiw it seems like there was a bit of misinfo going around about what exactly the americans' "last minute demands" were, which carney was shaping for political gain (the stuff about french language and quebec culture in particular)

Applying tariffs that will especially affect battleground states Wisconsin, Michigan, and Maine is a good way to apply pressure.

My sense is that the point which got Carney to walk away was the clause giving America the power to veto our trade agreements with other countries, which hasn't gotten nearly as much play in US media as the Quebec stuff. I'd like to see the details verified independently, but you obviously can't trust the word of their negotiators.

Where do Canadian retaliatory tariffs land? Based on all affected products on Sept 8 (including pre-existing tariffs), here's the value of exports times tariff rates as a share of each state's GDP. #cdnecon #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/a7Lxok5CZ5

— Trevor Tombe (@trevortombe) August 25, 2026

giving America the power to veto our trade agreements with other countries

I heard this as well - apparently added late in the talks

the clause giving America the power to veto our trade agreements with other countries

this is kind of splitting hairs but it wasn't a veto per se. according to the reporting, canadian negotiators were in on the idea of aligning tariffs, they just didn't want to have to go along with any future tariff changes

On Friday, U.S. officials raised concerns about Canada’s future trade agreements and how they would guard against foreign products flooding into North America. They wanted to be able to review and potentially dictate the terms for Canada’s trade agreements with other countries, a Canadian official said.

Canadian negotiators had gone into the talks suggesting the ultimate goal should be to create a “Fortress North America,” as they called it, with ultralow or nonexistent tariffs inside its walls, namely between Canada and the United States, and aligned tariffs for outsiders.

The United States wanted Canada to apply U.S. tariffs to other countries, particularly when it came to steel, now and in the future: If the United States changed policy and placed higher tariffs on certain goods from a third country, Canada would need to do the same, even if it already had a trade agreement in place, a Canadian official said.

For the Trump administration, this was necessary to prevent, for example, cheaper steel from flooding third countries through Canada and into the United States.

But this was unacceptable to the Canadians, who are currently in talks on multiple trade deals with Latin American and other nations as part of Mr. Carney’s vision to diversify trade away from dependence on the United States.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/25/world/canada/trump-carney-trade-war-tariffs.html

i wasn't aware but apparently malaysia and the uk have similar "reciprocal" clauses in the deals they signed (though it seems like the language is pretty soft in the uk one)

there's a terror that the odd Chinese electric car will somehow sneak into Michigan and once Americans see how awesome the $10K cars are, they will want them as well and we can't allow that

I mean aligning tariffs for North America makes some sense, but having the United States unilaterally decide what those tariffs are is obviously not going to be acceptable

Even in normal times that would not be acceptable; but couldn’t imagine now, Canada having to go along with every taco Tuesday tantrum and reversal

yes, the point in that NYT article that the US would not be bound in any way by the written text of the deal is a sore spot

The Canadians also pressed the United States for a level of certainty that the deal would not be scrapped overnight by the Trump administration. But the United States maintained that it would retain the power to change tariff policy against Canada at any time, irrespective of the agreement, officials said. Mr. Carney would say in his seething Saturday address to Canadians: Sometimes, the United States signature is “written in pencil.”

the central goal of the negotiations is that there must be Americans who the law protects but does not bind, alongside Canadians who the law binds but does not protect

There must be some residual benefit to all of this in terms of how the rest of the world sees Carney digging in.

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/