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.

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

Just saw Beshear, the Kentucky governor, defending Canada in a CNN interview (paraphrase): "They've been there for us every time, whether we were right or wrong." Nice to hear, but just for the record, we didn't sign on for Vietnam or Iraq.

well, we were polite about it at least.

With a little self-deprecation mixed in, no doubt: "It's not you, it's us."

100% tariffs yawn, why not 100000%

Join his silly Peace Club, and every time there's a meeting, just call in sick.

Steve Outhouse

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/conservatives-steve-outhouse-pierre-poilievre-9.6993317

lmao

Story is old but still makes meet giggle

*me

it's a timeless tale

gross story

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jan/29/david-eby-alberta-separatism-treason

so did anyone else (re)register to be an NDP member

pulling for an Avi Lewis win

I'd give him the best odds....I didn't vote in the last NDP leadership race either, but I probably would have cast one for Jagmeet, so clearly my instincts are not to be trusted.

I sincerely wonder if Charlie Angus could have maintained the party's rural working class vote, though when it comes down to it the NDP have been a victim of Duverger's Law. Jagmeet was at least able to get some media attention, though not enough for actual created programs like dentalcare to matter in last year's election.

Duverger's Law

thank you for mentioning this term, new to me and v usefl

Yeah it's remarkable how Canada has been one of the best counterexamples to Duverger's Law until last year, maybe because of historic regional voting patterns for NDP, BQ, or the old Reform. But our media consumption has become nationalized, and at least since the rise of JT I've been talking to people in the heart of Vancouver or Toronto who voted red to keep the Tories out. Which is just not a realistic fear - if East Van went Conservative, they'd have also won every other riding in the country.

Alberta separatists want $500 billion--loan, giveaway, don't know--from the States to get their journey going.

I'm sure Trump is good for it

(that was sarcasm)

Don't watch the Olympics at all, except for the key Canadian hockey games down the stretch. To have both the men and women lose like that, and lose to the U.S. both times, feels awful.

Really? I seldom feel that way. I was kinda bummed that Canada didn't medal once in downhill

Men's curling results mattered

I don't want to lose anything to the U.S. right now. The WS followed by both hockey medals, all three in overtime, is too much.

I swear the CBC publishes a story just like this every few months: Canadian military personnel identified on white supremacist dating site

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/whitedate-canada-military-9.7117307

Ah yes, another "Canadian military personnel leans heavily to the right" shocka

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