Subscript5676 @ Subscript5676 @lemmy.ca

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5 mo. ago

Thank you for sharing this article @Sunshine@lemmy.ca. I must admit that I’ve been rather pessimistic about the election outcome, that 41% of the votes went to the Cons, that I forgot to sufficiently celebrate the fact that 44% voted for the Libs, many of which were out with the intention of denying the Cons government. That I forgot the fact that the fact this happened gives us all, at home and abroad, hope that the fight goes on and that we stand a chance at decency. Thank you!

Sorry, I can’t help myself.

… Would you say they stole your taco?

I think it’s worth pointing out that the LPC is not really in a good place, even if they did win the election and formed a minority government. People were frustrated with them, and we know this from earlier polls, the popular vote, particularly on the fact that the CPC is right on their tail, and the fact that too many of the ridings were extremely close calls (yes there’s vote splitting, but I’d say that’s only one factor in the CPC’s huge surge). If Carney does anything funny, it doesn’t just cost him his political career, it would wipe out the LPC in the next election, and may even effectively paralyze the political centre and left for years to come (given that we now have a much weakened NDP, and only 1 Green seat). People in the LPC should be aware of this, or at least I hope they do, cause it will most likely be the end of most of their political careers.

So I believe there’s pressure within the LPC to keep Carney in check.

Sure, he could blindside literally everyone and do things that would benefit Brookfield, but there’s no guarantee that it would actually benefit himself due to the blind trust. Carney would become a pariah to Canadians, and make people even angrier at Brookfield, which may, in turn, even if not immediately, hurt their bottom line. We haven’t even gotten to the legal battles that will ensue. Carney would have to be pretty stupid to make that kind of gamble, compared to actually just working normally as a politician and get his pension and live ultra-comfortably. But, we do have lots of dumb politicians that would do that, all over the world, so it’s an understandable worry. Just look at recent kleptocratic episodes, and how a good chunk of these kleptocrats barely served jail time and/or paid back what they’ve stolen.

I can’t say I’m familiar with the political history that far, but that does seem like a disastrous episode for them, at least from reading about it. Disastrous, but not fatal. They were down to 2 MPs at one point after the 2011 election. Damn.

I was just thinking that BQ still have their leader on, but naur, they’re almost wholly regionalistic that it’s not really worth talking about in terms of a national leadership reset. It would be straight up disastrous for BQ as a whole if Blanchet wasn’t even elected as MP.

That said, PP has a chance at staying on as leader; he may have squandered the last few months leading up to the election, but from the various polls we’ve seen, the gap was closing between the LPC and the CPC, and PP has the historic vote share to pressure the party’s leadership into letting him stay

Jagmeet is unfortunate but his time was far over. You could argue that the NDP was sacrificed for the LPC (f you FPTP), but in many provinces, their seatsand even vote share were somewhat evenly split between the LPC and the CPC, so it’s not purely a consequence of strategic voting; the CPC definitely ate some of their original pie. Not only is this bad news for the NDP (cause it means they’ve really disappointed their supporters), but that some of these disappointments may have led to voters swinging to the other side. We’ll have to wait until we see voter turnout data to give us more hints about what else we should takeaway from this election.

The LPC, well, Carney’s already a new leader, so the reset’s already done there, but the other people aren’t likely to change, at least there hasn’t been an indication of that. They have their work cut out for them this time, and it will be a really tough 4 years ahead, or shorter. If they disappoint, and couldn’t solve at least a few of the crises we’re in right now, they might really get fully wiped out. I hope they actually are aware of that fact, especially given how dangerously close the CPC is to them (vote share, not seats, though they’re arguably pretty close in seats too).

I really hope the LPC actually recognizes that they’re deep in the water right now, and that there are people in the LPC with visions that’ll prioritize the longevity of the Canadian center and left by implementing PR, in case they actually fail to deliver and get wiped off the national stage.

The TLDR is, no, I don’t think it’s true that Canada didn’t want anything to do with what pp has to offer. And the proof is in the vote share. If the Libs f up, I believe that the Cons can easily re-campaign on a similar platform, and they will, quite likely, handily win the next election.

Now for the long version…

Unfortunately, I don’t think the results were that simple. Not only have the Cons gained a lot of seats this round, they also gained a lot in vote share, at a historic level not seen since the 1980s. They’re also trailing behind the Libs at 2.1% (around 410k) votes at this time of writing according to the CBC. Had people not rallied behind the Libs and the vote-splitting were any worse, we might’ve ended up with a Cons government (worth noting that given their track record, it’s unlikely that they would be able to function as a minority government, so if they are to form government, they almost have to win the majority). Regardless of what we think of pp’s politics, he’s been able to garner a lot of support through amplifying and channeling the anger that people have due to current issues, to bring about this historic vote share for the Cons. This is one of the key takeaways of this election IMHO.

Yes, I believe the Libs have the potential to do Canada good and protect Canada from the US under Carney. Yes, pp’s a terrible leader by many metrics and is highly unlikable by the general public. And yes, most Canadians don’t want to be like the States and the anti-wokeness bs is clearly not as pervasive here.

But we are not without problems. Problems that pp has successfully gotten people to be mad about and channel their anger in the wrong direction. We’re in a poly-crisis, and such scenarios give the perfect conditions for fascists to swoop in and gain support, and pp has definitely taken advantage of that.

And I also do not, for a single second, think that the anti-woke, Maple MAGAts days are over. They are clearly part of the Cons’ base. There are voices saying that those people will only vote for the PPC, who has earned less than 1% of the vote share, and declared those dead, but some of those voices are from the Cons themselves, and pp was vocal about his support for the Freedom Convoy and that he repeatedly campaigned on anti-wokeness. The fact that the Cons have not imploded over their leader’s affinity to the far-right (iirc pp has had multiple appearances in far-right podcasts) should be a testament to who their base includes.

It only means “we have this bunch of people that we say are ‘the enemy’, but we keep the definition vague so that it can be anyone or any group that is convenient for us to use, as per the fascist playbook.” The purpose is to channel hate and people’s frustrations into a movement for their own purposes, and it doesn’t matter to fascists (or neofascists, or pseudo-fascists, etc) if it’s actually built on nothing.

“Woke” meant something, and there was the “anti-woke” people, and the right took advantage of that hate, twisted and muddled it into basically a meaningless but convenient tool today.

I initially thought I’d give them the benefit of the doubt cause I’ve seen them around, and they sometimes say things that look like they can think and hold some kind of conversation. But from the reply they’ve given me, it looks like it was not needed. I was basically Ben-Shapiro-ed there.

Using Germany as an example to argue against PR is disingenuous on many levels. It shows a lack of understanding of how things work, what things are meant for, and also a blatant disregard of Germany’s history.

1. You’re essentially asking for an electoral system to keep extremists at bay, when no such system exists because it is simply impossible for any system to do that. Trying to use an electoral system for such a purpose is operating at the wrong level if you want to keep extreme views in check.
2. Germany has a unique history with far-left ideologies, how it got dismantled, and how the East and West reunified. If you look at the current state of old East Germany, you’ll see that the prosperity of the West did not flow into the East; their living conditions are bad, amenities lacklustre, there’s not enough jobs around and they don’t pay well, and the Western population can easily buy up their lands and properties just due to how much disparity there is in terms of wealth. And if you look at the electoral map and results of the last election, you’ll see that both far-left and far-right parties have a strong hold on old East Germany. This is the failure of the German government at truly unifying both sides of the old Germany. And if anything, I’d even argue that it’s a successful example of PR at work, as far as being a system goes.
3. Keeping or adopting any kind of Winner-Takes-All system will simply further divide us and keep voters feeling disenfranchised, believing that voting brings no effective change, all for no good reason.

An electoral system is not political. It’s the framework of which you exercise democracy.

Trying to make frameworks, which are meant to surface all voices, suppress certain ones is, frankly, barking up the wrong tree.

Way to blow a good lead and give your opponents ammo, and especially at an opponent that’s trying to grab onto every possible thing that could be an ammo.

Edit: And I also wanna say, man I just can’t with the CPC. Their rhetoric sucks, their role as the opposition is juvenile af (just look at this childish comeback!), and their entire existence feels like they just pull Canadian politics down to the sandpit and make people fight like dumb kids who don’t know and can’t act better.

The Japanese does this!

I’ve definitely heard of irrational hatred towards the Libs from South Asians, but not so much from those of Chinese descent, but tbf my real life circle isn’t that big and we don’t really talk about politics. As an immigrant myself from a similar demographic (am Southeast Asian), I have to say that I don’t understand this rightward shift in voting sentiments. Is it cause they’ve never been under Harper, or never heard of what things were like under him? (I’ve only been here since Trudeau) The Cons never came across as being friendly to non-Whites, and that should already be a warning sign.

But afaik, a good number of the Chinese that I know of are generally supportive of being tough on crime and see Canada as being unsafe, especially the older generation. They praise China for having strong police presence and for its seemingly lower crime rate, and then says things like, “It’ll never be like that in Canada. And to think that we came here because it used to be bad there and was much safer here.” One that I’ve talked to said that he supports the CPC for being tough on crime (allegedly I would say, but nonetheless), and support scaling back immigration even further to hopefully bring back how Canadians used to be much more friendlier (he sees the large increase in new immigrants as a reason why Canadians have become less friendly overall). Perhaps to these people, they would rather trade being possibly oppressed for a chance of having lower crime rate? Idk how that’s more assuring from a safety standpoint but it makes sense to them.

Isn’t the issue here that she can’t re-enter Canada, and IRCC seems to refuse helping her?

Thanks for the link. I’ve updated the post

Thanks for the notice. I thought it’d be nicer if I posted an Indivious link but I guess it’s not that simple :/ I’ll change it to a YT link

So you think someone should somehow just get citizenship just because they’ve stayed there for long enough? Many countries do not approve of dual citizenship, and so most people would have to give up on their original citizenship to become a Canadian citizen. That’s not something to be taken lightly of. People have relationships in their home country, and they might lose easy access to their home country by forfeiting their citizenship and getting a Canadian one. How they get taxed in their original country also changes, and might also be detrimental to their finances depending on how much business and investment they’re conducting. What about having to take care of family?

And even if they don’t have any of those, you may live in a foreign country for 25 years, but you might not have thought of the new country as home, and that could be the case for various reasons, some of which may be bad ones, but there are good reasons as well.

So, like the other comment said, you’re showing a great lack of empathy, but tbf, you might not be aware of these considerations someone has to think about while deciding whether getting that citizenship is worth it.

It might not be manipulation, but from the “buy now” messaging that they said, it effectively is.

Seriously, every time I hear arguments similar to your coworkers, I say the same damn thing, “WTF are you doing here?”

I’ve also heard things like, “Canadians are just not competitive, too laid back, and/or lazy,” and it makes me roll my eyes, like they don’t understand the culture here and just think the US is more “healthily” competitive, people are somehow “more motivated” to work, etc.

“Like seriously, WTF are you still here?”

I grew up in another part of the world and I know what “not competitive” looks like; people literally do not want to care about competition, and their only response when actual competition comes around (inevitably when there’s a similar business in town) would be to lower prices and hammer them ads when a better player comes around. They’re so lazy that they would set up a business, treat their employees badly, have literally no proper vision and path for their business, and expect their business to auto-pilot to success, and for some, their businesses will somehow survive. Workers are also lazy; pushing responsibilities around is basically the national work culture, and those with any sense of responsibility ends up getting burdened by all the work people push around. You can certainly survive and actually thrive here if you know how to protect your time and energy, and continually skill-up (most people don’t do that), but work will feel like a slog a lot of the times just cause of all the above reasons.

More like “Make every confession an accusation!”