Poilievre says he would 'cut wasteful foreign aid,' work towards NATO spending target

It's a rare day when the opposition is just so objectively bad that you actually get to be worse than normal and not be anything close -- and, of course, the reds don't really start too far in our favour to begin with.

While our choice (during FPTP) is between 'bad' and 'worse', they have a lot of buffer space.

"We're gonna build a wall, take the guns and put all those dumbass rednecks in it! More money for my legal fees please!"

Why is Justin Trudeau Bad - he will often point out SOMETHING JUSTIN TRUDEAU HAS ACTUALLY DONE THAT IS BAD.

Pollievre is not unique in this, but a major pitfall of opposition leaders is they spend all their time saying the current party leader is bad, but they never actually say what they'd do different. Mulcair was awful for this as well.

What does set Pollievre and the conservatives apart lately is what qualifies as a national scandal to them. Lately there's been a lot of Trudeau took a vacation scandals, which turn out to be Trudeau spent time with people he's spent time with for his whole privileged life. The bar the PC's set for scandal is moronic.

On the list of things Trudeau has been called evil for, I find most to be bullshit. Even pinning the WE scandal on hims was bullshit, as the recommendation was made by public servants and Trudeau asked them to try again because the optics were bad, to which they returned with the same plan. You can call me a Trudeau simp for that or whatever but I don't particularly like him and I would be happier if they ran someone else instead of throwing the next election to a Conservative majority out of pride and hubris like Kathleen Wynn did.

He actually has talked about how to get more housing being built. He has actually talked about things to cut - and why to cut them (like the Carbon tax that has had pretty much zero benefit, but has inflated the cost of heating, transportation, and food in this countries at a time we have an affordability crisis).

What's actually wrong with the carbon tax other than it being the conservative boogeyman for 5 years running? It's actually a conservative idea. The heating oil exemption is entirely a shitshow of an idea.

On housing, I think we all agree that there needs to be more done. I actually have listened to what Pollievre has said and it's not terrible.

I do think playing strong man and calling every barrier to housing NIMBYism will result in a lot side effects like the Ontario greenbelt getting destroyed and houses built on cheap floodplains or other unsuitable land because cities are in a financial bind.

Block Chain being out of control of the Government, means the Government can’t devalue the currency

Pollievre was the finance critic at the time he proposed this! 1 month after he made those comments bitcoin dropped 57%.

If Bitcoin was such a great hedge against inflation, it should be inversely correlated with inflation these last few years. In late 2021 inflation started rising above guidance levels, Bitcoin was jumping between $60k and $30k and back. 2022 we reached peak inflation, and BTC started the year with a drop. Then BoC and US Fed announced rate hikes starting in 2022, and Bitcoin dropped 57%. Now that interest rates are flat and expected to decrease, BTC has been increasing again. Bitcoin isn't actually an inflation hedge, it is entirely purchased by speculators because it has no utility except for speculation. In theory, sure inflation hedge, in practice, it's a speculate asset.

Gold hasn't even had standout performance since inflation started. I think the idea of an inflation free currency sounds great but isn't possible because inflation was largely driven by supply shortages, government handouts, and speculative greed. Increases in the money supply do play a part, but a Gold standard assumes all inflation is due to monetary inflation, and not fluctuations in demand or supply or assets. The price of gold also jumps a lot, so if we used the gold standard, the price of gold is always fixed, but those fluctuations result in the prices of every other good jumping around inversely, which would make prices a lot less predictable. The value of the dollar would decrease any time anyone mines gold so there'd by inflation anyways, and if China or India decided to dump their gold reserves they could tank our economies whenever they wanted.

Central banking and managing the money supply are incredibly powerful tools. They can be used poorly, or well. After the financial crisis of 2008 when trillions of dollars of value were lost (or rather, it came out they never existed in the first place), managing interest rates and the money supply were the only things that actually caused economies to recover.

Slowing down immigration is really important. We are adding more people than jobs being added to the economy, and more people than houses can be built. We also have an issue with Doctors. If a person already owns a house here - whatever. But we need to slow down on immigration.

I agree that we should require an immigration plan when we set immigration targets.

No. But you have to make sure your Outfit provides a sense of you being competent. I don’t think he has ever said “fellow poor people” But he has certainly pointed out the policies and situations that have driven more people into poverty.

My point here was they had him drop the glasses and tie as part of a makeover because he looked like a dweeb, but he is a dweeb and I don't think he really relates to the average Canadian.

Car thefts are up

This is 100% the fault of car manufacturers making cars that can be trivially stolen. Car thefts aren't even at a historically high level if you actually look at the numbers, the only differences now are cars are more expensive and easier to steal than they ever have been.

We have had more Scandals in the last 8 years than in the rest of my lifetime - and they all fall on Trudeau’s Shoulders

Citation needed. As I mentioned earlier, what qualifies for a scandal these days is pathetic and driven largely by conservative owned media.

I'm no fan of Trudeau's since he shitcanned electoral reform after bathing in the applause of citizens from across the country for months after saying that election would be the last one under FPTP.

Having said that... PP could show us how smart he is by whipping out his big balls and telling us EXACTLY what he'd do to change things, complete with a costed budget. But he hasn't. And he won't. Because he's full of shit.

How do I know he's full of shit? Because Thug Ford ran the same sort of campaign (Buck a beer folks!!) and just look at how he's fucking with the entire province - specifically health care and education, to the benefit of his friends in private industry.

Pierre is by current appearances more competent of

"Competent of" is a hat on a hat. Stop writing like an American.

a Leader than Trudeau,

Mr Polievre isn't even as competent a leader as Mr o'Toole.

and Competent is what this country needs.

Agreed there. But cruelty and elitist conservatives has NEVER been the way. Not even once.

the Carbon tax that has had pretty much zero benefit, but has inflated the cost of heating, transportation, and food in this countries at a time we have an affordability crisis

Isn't it true that Canadians receive a rebate to offset the average cost of the carbon tax, i.e. lower emitters actually come out ahead, while excessive emitters are the ones paying the most? What's the alternative plan for tackling climate change?

[Blockchain or gold standard] would generally mean less bailouts, and more cautious action taking that needs to focus on prevention of crisis instead of printing your way out of a financial crisis.

To me, printing your way out of a financial crisis, which is often out of the control of the Bank of Canada and the Goverment of Canada in the first place (see: global pandemic), is a feature, not a bug, of reserve banking. I think that Keynesian economics helped to mitigate the impacts of the 2008 sunprime lending crisis and the COVID-19 pandemic, in Canada.

Instead of Parroting the Media, maybe actually go and listen to his uncut, unclipped answering of the media. Unlike what Trudeau seems to do, Pierre is seemingly actually able to speak a whole sentence without stuttering - almost like he is actually confident in his remark: And that is bloody refreshing.

Pierre Poilievre does not "talk straight":

But Poilievre’s team have recently instituted a policy whereby journalists may only ask one question each, no follow-up, five in total. (His flacks cite “time constraints” at each event.) This practice revives an old tactic from the previous Harper government, which grew tired of the media by the end of its nearly-ten-years in power and clamped down on all the pesky question-asking.

The Conservative media wranglers snatch the microphone out of reporters’ hands as soon as they ask their question, depriving them of any retort to dear leader’s rants.

In responding, Poilievre generally lumps these questions into one of two categories — ones he likes, which he can use to deliver an answer that may go viral; and ones he doesn’t, whereby he can attack the journalist for asking them and achieve even more virality.

https://www.bugeyedandshameless.com/p/the-pierre-poilievre-media-circus

He brings receipts, too. You can see his entire unedited question and response if you want to check his characterization.

Trudeau says a whole lot of nothing in most of his responses, granted, so he's not much better. At least he usually addresses the actual question?