Canadian federal election: Socialists at the Gates?

[caroljane]

On the dumber side, I should alert you to the only sole message of the Conservative attack ads, with which we of the dumber side of radio listeners have had to hear it seems forever."Justin Trudeau, he's just not ready."Yeah I know, iit is not on the order of he's a serial murderer, but this is Canada. These ads are so pervasive that even the most conservative Harper-cheerleader paper here, the Sun, ran a cartoon that said, "If they don't stop saying that, I'm going to vote for him."

[william.scherk]

Harper's communication wonks probably think the 'Justin Trudeau, He's Just Not Ready' ads are effective even in constant rotation. If we could ever see internal documents that argued for its effectiveness, the docs would contain focus-group findings. Those findings would have revealed a doubt in voters' minds, youth and inexperience and a thin resume. To exploit that doubt was good politics, but the ad turns me off. What was Harper doing before his first day in Ottawa? How thin was his resume?

For those who are perplexed, the father, Pierre had a yuge resume by the time he became Justice minister. Lawyer, author, intellectual, already a public figure, a professor even. You could feel the presence of his mind by reading his books, among which was on my dad's shelf: Federalism and the French-Canadians. His mind was grappling with questions of state long before he took a seat in in the Commons.

I won't mention the other books because Zzzzz. Point being the elder Trudeau was accomplished, the younger's career highlight was as a teacher. I have long considered Justin a little bit of a showboat, an actor, and wondered why he had not used his privilege as an advantage to spur education and achievement in larger matters of public life. Pierre was an active, brainy, passionate man. Justin does seem a bit forest fawn in comparison to the worldly buck Pierre.

But holy Jesus, the ad has been broadcast about a million times too many. It is not budging the polls in the least. It is past time to retire it.

You non-Canada OLers can look at this with fresh eyes, not being subjected to it. This is an attack-ad, Canadian-style. Sober, restrained, boring but calculating. Effective?

Edited September 25, 2015 by william.scherk

[Jules Troy]

I'm seriously thinking of leaving the country.

[william.scherk]

That Canadian passport can open all doors, Jules. Professional skills are a ticket to ride.

For those who are not already in a coma -- the latest polling aggregates show the incumbent party quite possibly losing its chance of forming a minority government.

Me, I would relish the return of steady fiscal responsibility under a Paul Martin-style Finance department. The lavish spending promises by Mr Harper seem the same old interest-group pay-off that party is infamous for.

Beyond that, I hate Harper's foreign policy incoherence, and his dog-whistles about 'old-stock Canadians' ... and his exploitation of the freaking Niqab issue. He wants to cleanse the civil service of 'religious symbolism'? Fuck. I look forward to his humbling and resignation and a return to his farm.

I voted in an advance poll yesterday. There was a forty-minute wait. Big crowds.

It is likely that all three women candidates leading in my riding will be biting their nails at 8pm October 19th. The local favourite, a former mayor, has managed to sit out three out of four all-candidates meetings. She gets her orders from the PMO and is afraid to be questioned by her putative employers. That kind of arrogance and indifference has led her to move from a complete shoo-in to a Drone. Her latest brochure highlights all the hundreds of millions of federal dollars that will flow like honey into Surrey ...

I get the impression in my very conservative riding that people are sick of the incumbents, and will be holding their noses hard.

[Brant Gaede]

I'm seriously thinking of leaving the country.

Canada needs you.

Canada wants you.

Canada loves you.

--Brant

heh, heh

[Jules Troy]

Love the country, disgusted at the management.

[Brant Gaede]

If you leave, management wins.

--Brant

sometimes there's no choice

[Jules Troy]

I voted at the advance polls today, holding my nose I voted for Harper.

[william.scherk]

The dice are rolling right now. The vote counting will begin when the first eastern province closes polls. Unlike in earlier elections, it is no longer illegal to report totals from one province before voting has finished in another. Thus the first vote totals will roll in from Newfoundland and Labrador at 9:30 pm Eastern Time. I will likely stick in some numbers when the die is cast in Ontario and Quebec.

From all the recent polling aggregates, it looks like our current prime minister, Stephen Harper of the Conservative party, will lose to the Liberal party under Justin Trudeau.

[Selene]

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/20/world/americas/canada-election-stephen-harper-justin-trudeau.html?emc=edit_na_20151019&nlid=53564225&ref=ctahttp://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/20/world/americas/canada-election-stephen-harper-justin-trudeau.html?emc=edit_na_20151019&nlid=53564225&ref=cta

OTTAWA — In an upset, Justin Trudeau, the leader of Canada’s Liberal Party, has unseated the Conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, according to a projection by the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. on Monday night.

Tom Mulcair of the New Democratic Party. Each of Canada's three big parties has led in one poll or another, but the country’s robust, dizzying political culture and first-past-the-post-system of simple plurality make it hard to predict an outcome.
In Unpredictable Canadian Elections, Plurality Is More Important Than PopularityOCT. 17, 2015
Prime Minister Stephen Harper broke with Canadian political tradition by formally opening the campaign in the middle of summer during what is a holiday weekend in most of the country.
Stephen Harper of Canada, Hoping to Extend Conservatives’ Hold, Calls ElectionsAUG. 2, 2015

For much of the 78-day race, all three major political parties were in a statistical dead heat, according to various polls. While the Liberal Party, led by Mr. Trudeau, the son of Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, had emerged on top in several polls over the past week.

[william.scherk]

And just this moment, a call made by the CBC that Trudeau will form a majority government. Quite a shocker for the Conservatives.

Hand your keys in, thanks for your work. Bye-Bye.

Canada takes a small lurch to the left, and the socialists come third.

Edited October 20, 2015 by william.scherk

[Selene]

And just this moment, a call made by the CBC that Trudeau will form a majority government. Quite a shocker for the Conservatives.

Hand your keys in, thanks for your work. Bye-Bye.

Canada takes a small lurch to the left, and the socialists come third.

And this is why this bi-partisan tyranny that is growing is being rejected by at least a 40% of the electorate down here.

A...

[Jules Troy]

Well on the bright side, the NDP got crushed. The other good thing is Trudeau has Paul Martin advising him. He was a very decent finance minister. Guaranteed the CDN will upon tomorrows opening drop to about 68 usd and the weak economy is going to take a bigger hit at least in the short term.

[Selene]

This cute Canadian lady wanted to know if the new PM was still going to do his Cartoons?

[Jules Troy]

She is a looker, no wonder the US "plunders" our resources!

[william.scherk]

Well on the bright side, the NDP got crushed. The other good thing is Trudeau has Paul Martin advising him. He was a very decent finance minister. Guaranteed the CDN will upon tomorrows opening drop to about 68 usd and the weak economy is going to take a bigger hit at least in the short term.

The sad thing is, forty odd percent of Canadian voters think Trudeau is the bright side.

I always take pleasure when a government or leader hands in the keys. I hate the idea of entrenched power. Even when a favoured government gets crushed, I like that we turn it over. Tonight some old warhorses and drones were turfed along with the government.

I underestimated Justin Trudeau. He spent a lot of time in the past two years doing the church basement tours that were probably as boring as anything, but somehow gave him a better pulse-reading than Harper.

As you say, the Liberals have deeply conservative financial instincts since Martin was at Finance. I expect a tight ship even with the projected deficits. The biggest changes will be on the social stage. The Liberals are the party of bilingualism, multiculturalism, and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. There will be whorehouses and needle-exchanges and safe-injection sites and pot shops and gay pride on public transit in our back yard, and ladies can dress up like ninjas wherever they want. We are going to splash out a bit on the world stage as we further liberalize socially.

It has gotta hurt for Harper and Mulcair. Their crushing of the NDP must hurt. Losing to Mr Not-Ready, reading the electorate so poorly, that has to hurt.

Respect to Mr Harper for his wickedest deed, announcing that Quebec was a nation in the House of Commons. I have always thought that was a political masterstroke. I dislike his tight-arsed Christianity, but he did his best to bow to reality -- as with gay rights and abortion and ninjas, he wasn't always easy with change, but he did not try to roll back reality.

Anything Trudeau might do that freaks you out in advance beyond fiscal swampland, Jules? I am dreading his Syria policy.

Trudeau won more Quebec seats for the Liberals than anyone since his father. Hmmmm.

-- Harper is saying thanks and goodbyes from Calgary right now. He is lurching into French. What a guy. What a run

-- a quick backgrounder from Reuters that mentions Trudeau the elder and some peculiarities of Canada:

Criticized for being more style than substance, Trudeau has used attacks on his good looks and privileged upbringing to win over voters, who recalled his father's rock-star presence and an era when Canada had some sizzle on the world stage.

Pierre Trudeau, who died in 2000, was in power for 15 years - with a brief interruption - and remains one of the few Canadian leaders to be known abroad.

Single when he took power, the elder Trudeau dated movie stars and models before marrying. He had three boys while prime minister, the eldest of whom now succeeds him in the nation's top office.

Financial market players had praised the Conservative government for its steady hand in economic management, which had spared Canada the worst of the global financial malaise. Trudeau has also promised to raise taxes on high-income Canadians and reduce them for the middle class.

Political pundits have already began to speculate on the makeup of a Trudeau government while pondering what caused the downfall of Harper, 56, who has been criticized for his aloof personality but won credit for economic management in a decade of global fiscal uncertainty.

Edited October 20, 2015 by william.scherk

[Jules Troy]

The best thing Harper ever did for all middle class Canadians was to up the TFSA amount to 10k. It isn't just for the 1%.

Income splitting so that those that wish to have a traditional family stay at home mom? Gone.

1000/payroll tax for everyyyyone. Yeah that is going to hurt those already hurting..

The days of solid pensions(unless of course you are an MP) are gone. Just look at what happened to the stelco steel workers. Company pensions insolvent so 20k guys are fucked out of their retirement... So the government is upping cpp? Are we relying on CPP and OAS to retire on? Only if you are living in a cardboard box and eating dogfood.

So yeah some people max out RRSP's great you get a little tax break when you buy them butttt ya still gotta pay taxes on it when you withdraw it. How many people do that? Noo they buy a house they can't hardly afford, one asset strategy. Over mortgaged to the hilt thanks to bottom basement interest rates(soon to be rising oh oh).

So the one good thing Harper did, raise the TFSA amount to 10k putting more control over your own future is getting scuttled back to 5k and it would not surprise me if Trudeau phases it out altogether..

An 18 year old if allowed to contribute 10k/year of his own after tax money got an average return of 6-7% could actually have over 2 million tax free never pay a dime on it as withdrawn when needed at retirement income. Talk about true independence from having to rely on government later in life. Well that's going to be a lot lower now. Over a million or more at retirement lower. Thanks Trudeau. (Who knows maybe he will change his mind.).

His only mistakes I think are going after the "1%". There are less than 300000 1% in Canada and they may actually leave. Even if they didn't and were taxed at 100% for punishment to appease the masses of idiots how much would that give the middle class in tax breaks? 32 cents?

I do like a lot of the liberal social freedom. I'm hoping he doesn't go batshit crazy and actually becomes fiscally "restrained". Our economy is not exactly rosy at the moment. I will be interested to see in a few hours if CDN drops to 65 usd over the next days or weeks.

[william.scherk]

Trudeau was sworn in with his 30-person cabinet yesterday. Insert new era bosh here.

A few outliers or oddities in the new cabinet. Half the members are women, and it is ethnically diverse and regionally balanced to the Nth. Here is a photo of Canada's new Defense minister, Harjit Sajjan. He is from my neck of the woods.

[Jules Troy]

I'm actually just happy the NDP got the crap stomped out of them. I think we are in for some interesting times ahead. Let's face it Harper was able to make ever boring Canadian politics even MORE boring.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here comes Ayn Rand via Rona Ambrose sneaking in, yea, with nose under the very tent of Canada...

Meet the New Ayn Rand-Loving Leader of Canada's Conservative Party

Michael

[william.scherk]

Rona Ambrose was a tough member of Stephen Harper's cabinet in several roles. In taking over until a leadership convention is held within the year, she may have ambitions beyond being interim caucus chief in Parliament. One signal that she may have ambitions to win leadership at the convention is her French. It is to the ear as awful and trudging as Elizabeth May's but it also shows she has been working on it, or has kept up with it -- at least enough to understand media questions in French (she already has a grounding in Portuguese and Spanish).

For perplexed readers, it is a modern convention that a national party leader be proficient in French. Mr Harper did tremendous work to turn himself bilingual. If Rona Ambrose spends the next year intensively improving her proficiency, she might run and win the leadership vote. Good on her. As for the Randian connection, I will dig up and share any more details on it I can find.

Ambrose was perhaps at her most awkwardly out of step with public opinion when dealing out Conservative positions on marijuana. From Michael's VICE link:

Most recently, Ambrose was tasked with fighting the expansion of Canada's medical marijuana system. After a string of court defeats, the government was forced to expand access to the medical marijuana regime. The most recent defeat forced Ottawa to allow the medical use of cannabis oils and edibles. Ambrose said she was "outraged" at the decision. She also introduced regulations that effectively stopped safe injection sites from opening in Canada, despite a Supreme Court case chiding them for doing exactly that.

She, too, comes from very similar stock to Harper. Born into an oil family, she is, despite her outrage at marijuana use, a self-described libertarian — as well as a fan of arch-conservative author Ayn Rand — and will likely do little to curry favour with the political center in Canada.

She has already tacked to the centre by announcing she will support a left-ish issue, a royal commission into missing and murdered indigenous women.

Will she tack left-libertarian as party leader on some social issues, giving way to the Canadian majority consensus on 'sinful' behaviour? You never know. If she really wants to be party commander for the long haul, she just might. I say good luck to her, she is tough and talented.

Zzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Edited November 7, 2015 by william.scherk

[Jules Troy]

She's kinda hawt.

[Selene]

Here comes Ayn Rand via Rona Ambrose sneaking in, yea, with nose under the very tent of Canada...

Meet the New Ayn Rand-Loving Leader of Canada's Conservative Party

Michael

OK, let's see a show of OL hands...other than the political malapropism of using libertarian and conservative as some nexus, do folks here agree with the description of Ayn as an "arch-conservative?"

She, too, comes from very similar stock to Harper. Born into an oil family, she is, despite her outrage at marijuana use, a self-described libertarian — as well as a fan of arch-conservative author Ayn Rand — and will likely do little to curry favour with the political center in Canada.

A...

[william.scherk]

The VICE article can be set aside as a kind of third-hand recounting of a political personality.  Justin Ling writes a fair bit about Canadian politics for VICE, and is quite well-informed, but isn't a first-rank journalist of Objectivish things; he is not alone in not quite grokking Rand's 'off-label' political will and reasoning.  The labeling of Rona Ambrose as a 'conservative' is from her interim position as leader of the Conservative party.   The labeling of Ambrose as a libertarian is from her own mouth.  The labeling of Rand as an 'arch-conservative' comes from relative ignorance.

 

In any case, the arguments about Rand as 'conservative' rage in the VICE article comments. This one was not too  mental, from a John Wayland Bales • a day ago

 

Although Ayn Rand excoriated conservatives, this writer calls her a conservative. And although libertarians support marijuana legalization and Rona Ambrose opposes it, this writer calls her a libertarian. Why should anyone pay any attention to an article written by such a muddled thinker?

 

 I found an nine year-old article that got the Ambrose-Rand ball rolling, featuring quotes from Madame Hawty herself. 

 

Ambrose calls herself a libertarian and an avid reader of Ayn Rand novels such as Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, beloved of neo-cons everywhere.

 

But she's also capable of statements that could have come from the reddest of Liberals.

 

"I think the government has a strong role to play to be there for people who need assistance,'' she says.

 

"First and foremost, that is the role of government -- to provide the infrastructure and to provide a social safety network. I believe in communities and I believe in people taking care of each other. The government is just us doing that on a larger scale.''

 

 

I sent a Twitter note to Ling, suggesting he was not quite grasping essential distinctions between Rand and conservatism.  I also found an Ambrose tweet that suggests she has quickly turned the page on Harper's leadership on one issue: the fate of indigenous women, the so-called 'missing and murdered' ...

 

 

Met @Puglaas this morning!Looking forward 2 working tgther 2 end violence against women, a passion of mine for years pic.twitter.com/Ji78wuqj3j

— Rona Ambrose (@RonaAmbrose)

November 6, 2015

[Darrell Hougen]

It will be interesting to see whether Canada resumes its attacks on freedom of speech:

As to what awaits us if the Liberals win, on an issue dear to my heart, Peter Frost writes of "The End of Indian Summer":

Until three years ago, Canada's human rights commissions had the power to prosecute and convict individuals for "hate speech." This power was taken away after two high-profile cases: one against the magazine Maclean's for printing an excerpt from Mark Steyn's book America Alone; and the other against the journalist Ezra Levant for publishing Denmark's satirical cartoons of the prophet Mohammed. Both cases were eventually dismissed, largely because the accused were well known and popular. As Mark Steyn observed:

'[...] they didn't like the heat they were getting under this case. Life was chugging along just fine, chastising non-entities nobody had ever heard about, piling up a lot of cockamamie jurisprudence that inverts the principles of common law, and nobody paid any attention to it. Once they got the glare of publicity from the Maclean's case, the kangaroos decided to jump for the exit. I've grown tired of the number of Canadian members of Parliament who've said to me over the last best part of a year now, "Oh, well of course I fully support you, I'm fully behind you, but I'd just be grateful if you didn't mention my name in public."' (Brean, 2008)

My case put the army of statist hacks opposed to free speech on the defensive, and eventually the Canadian Parliament repealed Section 13, under which Maclean's was dragged into court. But those who value identity-group rights over individual liberty fell quiet, bided their time, and are looking forward to enforcing ideological compliance once again:

Today, our Indian summer is coming to an end. In Alberta, the human rights commission is pushing to see how far it can go, and Ezra Levant is again being prosecuted... Last month in Quebec, the government passed a bill that greatly expands the powers of its human rights commission to prosecute "hate."

Bill 59, introduced by Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard's Liberal government, would make it illegal to promote hate speech in Quebec, without defining what hate speech is. Despite this, it would expand the definition of hate speech to include "political convictions" for any speech deemed by Quebec's human rights bureaucracy to promote "fear of the other", an absurdly vague term which could easily lead to prosecutorial abuses...

How did this piece of legislation come to be? It had been sold to the public as a means to fight Islamist terrorism and, as such, gained the support of many people, including right-wing politicians who thought its "ant-hate" language was just window dressing to make it more palatable. In its final form, however, there are no references at all to Islamism or terrorism... So it isn't surprising that only two groups to date have supported the bill: The Canadian Muslim Forum and the Muslim Council of Montreal. (Marcotte, 2015)

As Joanne Marcotte notes ironically, this bill was pushed through by a center-right government that claims to believe in individual freedom...

After a brief lull, a new offensive has begun against "hate speech" in Canada.

Darrell