Sorry, thank you for the correction on the number of petitioners. I didn’t read the article carefully enough. From the article:
The total number of petitioners submitted to the Town of Barrhead landed at 851, with the total accepted petitioners coming out to 712.
For the record I don’t like what the UCP are doing in Alberta right now either, and I don’t think their approach represents acceptable governance.
You didn’t infer this, but I want to say for the record that it would be incorrect to infer, that just because the UCP received 54-ish% of the popular vote in the last provincial general election, it doesn’t follow that 54% of the population of Alberta is anti-trans. The UCP as a political entity takes aggressive stances on a bundle of issues that rationally-minded conservative voters would (and do) find unappealing. The fact that a Conservative stronghold like Barrhead could only get 10% of its citizens behind this petition goes to show that this kind of thinking is overwhelmingly not the norm here among the citizens.
The town of Barrhead has a population of 4320 people. Only 10% of the town petitioned for this as-yet-unpassed bylaw. Those individuals don’t even represent the town of Barrhead, much less the entire province.
I don’t mean this personally - I’m surprised that someone who is as vocal about proportional representation as you are would be insensitive to the demographic facts of this matter.
If were going to have a public health system, people should be required to take care of themselves
On the face of it, this sounds sensible. But, thinking more deeply, who should decide the required amount of care a person ought to take? Ideas about what it means to ‘take care of yourself’ are varied. And consider that some citizens of this country are simply unable to take the same personal health decisions that others have the privilege to take without a second thought.
What you’re talking about here isn’t a public system. A healthcare system that only serves certain chosen people is not public in any meaningful sense.
A public healthcare system is imperfect on the whole, but on average, when funded and administered properly, is structured to apportion care based on need, instead of the profit motive. I think that’s worthwhile, and the right thing for a society to do from a moral standpoint.
At this rate, it won’t be long before Poilievre is speaking in full limerick. What an idiot.
The unspoken subtext in Trudeau’s comment is of course “they’re playing silly games while I’m running the country”. Trudeau’s only available response to the end of the supply and confidence agreement is to downplay its significance, while avoiding looking like a bitter jackass. Ironically, his comment is itself exactly the kind of ‘politics’ he’s accusing the other party leaders of practicing. It’s image management, that’s it.
I disagree. And also I don’t understand how your comment is relevant to the conversation. Making a non sequitur like this isn’t constructive. So, nice try but, you will not divide us!
Poilievre is making a string of very strange political gambles. Doing the rhyming nickname thing, trying to look like a cool badass, going on a string of unusual, foolish-looking, public attacks against rivals.
If the Conservatives don’t do as well as expected in the federal election, I wonder what’s next for them, from a leadership, attitude, and policy standpoint.
This will be Gen Z’s first real federal election to participate in. I’m very interested to see their impact. Convention is to assume that the young won’t vote, but, life and livelihood for the youth in Canada has never been worse, at least in my lifetime.
TFW your election campaign was provably targeted by hostile foreign powers because your foreign policy positions are contrary to their aims and goals.
From a policy standpoint, disengagement is the worst possible strategy. Worse than engagement, and far worse than developing proactive foreign policy in the face of constant foreign interference.
Canada needs to create a foreign agent registry, and establish more sophisticated systems to combat and sanction foreign interference in our political and cultural spaces. For fuck sake, we know for a fact that right now, we have a sitting Member of Parliament (Han Dong) who has their seat as a result of Chinese state influence into their candidacy. The fact that we lack the mechanisms, or the political will, or both, to do something about this, is insanity.
I think the polarization about the issue of what to do about drug addiction is partially a symptom of the fact that different communities have different needs. The approach needs to be different in Gunn than in downtown Edmonton. But, we’re in a position where the political interests of the citizens in those places don’t overlap very much, so no matter what, we’re going to end up with solutions that nobody is fully happy with.
Speaking as a person with absolutely no love for the UCP, and with dissimilar views about how to address the problem of addiction, I don’t hate the fact that they’re actually trying something that might help people. Maybe this program won’t work, but at least it’s an attempt. It’s better than hand waving about abstinence and law and order which takes no effort at all.
If only a federal political party with electoral victory within their reach had promised a meaningful reform to the first past the post system. Around 2015. That would have really been timely, and materially improved the Canadian political space.
Liberals breaking a promise that wasn’t rooted in a sincere vision of what this country should look like, and instead was made to secure votes from a specific demographic group :shocked pikachu:
I think this platform is exactly the sort of thing that millennial politicians will be pushing for. So we’ll see it in maybe 10-15 years.
One of the first things Trudeau did as Prime Minister was break the top-line platform promise that got him elected - he promised Canadians that the 2015 federal election would be the last one under the first past the post system. So I’d say from the standpoint of democracy, he had an absolutely horrible start.
Of course he went on to reap the benefits of the imbalanced first past the post system for two subsequent federal elections, one of which he called unnecessarily during the pandemic in order to consolidate power for his party.
I think him and his party have been vaporware since day one.
Agreed - “do something” is the way forward here. That said, every day the Liberals take heat on their inaction on foreign interference, the profile of the issue rises. And I think in the big picture, that’s good for Canadian democracy. Hopefully it leads parties to take stronger and more detailed stances in their platforms for combating election interference. But there I go wishing again…
Like everyone else, I too am baffled that security clearance is the hill that Poilievre is willing die on. Makes him look like just another House pugilist who is dug in on a stance and deaf to context and reason.
FWIW, I think the NDP has had consistently reasonable and principled stances on this issue since the CSIS leak. I like the cut of their jib on this. So, I think there’s good reason to believe that they’d be doing far better on this file than the Liberals. I understand the “every party sucks” mentality, but I don’t actually think it’s true in this circumstance.
I don’t blame anyone for wanting to know the information about this up-front. We would absolutely not be here talking about this issue, with pdf copies of a detailed, public NSICOP report if not for a whistleblower who acted well outside the established channels to alert Canadians to institutional inaction on foreign interference. The NSICOP report actually admits as much.
The established system is not functioning as it should, and the current government has shown not only limited interest, but active unwillingness to do what’s right when it comes to foreign interference. Knowing these things, and then being scolded to “Wait for the system to work as intended”, is brutal. We don’t have reason to believe that the system will actually work as intended. The current government is to blame for allowing this erosion of trust, and if they’re tired of hearing “tell us the names”, they shouldn’t have sat on intelligence advice for 6 years. This situation would be playing out completely differently if the current government had even a slightly positive track record on dealing with foreign interference.
We deserve to live in a society where MPs who wittingly take part in the subversion of Canadian democracy can expect to be promptly imprisoned. Instead, we live in a society where it’s not unthinkable that nothing further will happen or be disclosed about this issue.
The House partisan gamesmanship needs to be ignored if we’re going to be serious about national security and sovereignty. Canadians deserve to know if their member of Parliament wittingly aided a foreign interference operation. We need to know right now. The notion that an election could occur while undisclosed traitors are on the ballot? This would be catastrophic.
There are absolutely no excuses for the current government’s horrific file on foreign interference:
There’s no good reason for any of it, and their inaction is an open invitation to China, India, and others for further interference.
It’s impossible to agree with Minister LeBlanc. Canadians cannot have confidence that police can investigate and lay charges when warranted. The NSICOP report details how our system is configured in such a way as to make that difficult or impossible.
Disclose the names of MPs who committed treason: go straight to prison
Commit treason: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Hmm.
I hear you.
I’m not sure there is really any vote that a thoughtful person could make that doesn’t involve some sort of moral compromise. There are things in the AB NDP platform that I really like, and there are some things that I’m indifferent to. There are some things I wish weren’t there, and some things that I really wish they made a bigger deal about. Despite that, I’m inclined to vote for them because I align more closely with them than any other provincial party. I think a lot of conservatives feel the same way about the UCP.
Again, I’m not trying to justify UCP policy in any way whatsoever. Kenney and Smith are both fools, and have made the province measurably worse for almost everybody. Despite that, I don’t think Alberta should be written off in a casual way. And I don’t think even a UCP voter should necessarily be written off. No matter what side of the aisle you’re on, a political choice is a balancing act of competing interests and aims.