[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[viper37]

I share BB's sentiment on the lack of meaningful environmental plan from the Conservatives.
I, however, cannot do a protest vote for the Green.

This party has resolutely camped with the worst instincts of the Liberal party by its willingness to help opponents of Quebec's Bill 21.

Not gonna vote for a party who hates me for what I am, a French-Canadian, and only seems to care about me when they want my vote.  No Liberal Party for me.

NDP is led by a moron.  "Vote for me!  I wear a turban!  I am so great!".  Nope, sorry.  Plus, that party is filled to the brim with commies.  I might have voted for Mulcair, had he still been there, had he implemented a sensible economic plan this time.

Bloc Québécois is led by a moron.  That's the kind of moron lots of people in and around Montreal love though, so I predict massive, positive newspapers and television coverage up 'til the end of the campaign.  Québécor-Média is solidly behind them.  And they now have their own internet radio stations too.

Maxime Bernier's party.  I even forgot the name.  Doesn't really matter.  He's a buffoon, in the vein of Donald Trump and Borish Johson.  We've seen first hand how well that goes for these country.  Plus, he's a fan of conspiracy theories, mostly about Climate Change, but sometimes other subjects too.  And he just insulted that little Asperger kid travelling by sail boat to the UN in New York and taking a plane to go back.  That was distateful, to say the least, to attack her on her handicapp.  It reminds me of Donald Trump mocking a disabled journalist at one of his gatherings.  Not the kind of politics I want in my country.

I'm left with the Conservatives, for better or for worst.  Or not voting at all. Could be an option.
I'm not a huge fan of Scheer.  Way too religious for my tastes, even though he's Catholic, not Evanlegical, his personal and past political positions seems to hint toward the same breed of religious fervor.  I'm not sure I can trust him to keep his religion seperate for his governing policies, and that would be bad.  Harper was deeply religious, deeply conservative, but that mostly didn't affect his performance as a great leader of our country.  A tad too much directives toward financing religious charities, especially those that preach abstinence instead of protected sex to fight the AIDS epidemic in Africa...

Maybe, one day, we'll have an atheist prime minister from the Conservative party.  We'll see how Alberta votes then

[Valmy]

True. Taxing citizens is a very "progressive" measure.  Now, what are the concrete actions taken by the Libs to reduced GHG emissions

Actually carbon taxes are a conservative solution by establishing conditions to let the free market find a solution. The other option is to make investments and regulations that pick winners, but maybe not the right winners.

But if you have some bright brilliant ideas, instead of bullshit, I would love to hear them.

[Camerus]

@ Viper  - Not sure what you're going on about, bud.  I wasn't arguing those were good policies, merely examples where Trudeau actually passed progressive policies (as opposed to merely "talking the talk").

@ CC - Seems your objections for the most part are "sure, that's a good start, but doesn't go far enough".

I still think it Trudeau's policies are pretty progressive within a federal context, even though they're bound not to go far enough for some - particularly on the environment. Though even there, Trudeau may have pursued policies that have pushed Alberta about as far as he can without causing a more serious national unity crisis.

So why should a progressive who doesn't think Trudeau's policies go far enough should vote for Trudeau in October?  The answer is the same as why a Tea Party supporter who bemoans his centre-right GOP representative as being a "RiNO" still votes for him on election day:  lack of realistic options.

[Ancient Demon]

I sort of agree with this article. Does it really matter who wins in this case?

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/andrew-coyne-two-parties-one-choice-or-is-it-two-choices-one-party

As we await the start of the election campaign that began several months ago, some cynics would have you believe the whole thing is little more than a hollow ritual, an empty contest in mass manipulation between rival gangs of careerists and power-seekers who, for all their partisan breast-beating, do not differ in any meaningful way.

Don't be fooled. Seldom have the choices between so stark, or the stakes so high.

The two main parties, after all, could not be more different. The one, it is well known, is little more than a personality cult centred on the leader, while the other is a personality cult, minus the personality. The first is notably bereft of any governing philosophy or principles but will say and do whatever it takes to win, while the second will say and do whatever it takes to lose.

Of course, both parties have from time to time had their share of scandals, a Wright-Duffy here, an SNC-Lavalin there, but with a critical difference. For whereas the Liberals abuse power because they can — because being so often in government and so accustomed to its pleasures, no one expects them to do any differently — the Conservatives do so because they must: because being so rarely in government, they are at every disadvantage, between an uncooperative bureaucracy and a hostile media, and need recourse to every expedient just to even the scales. Or because the Liberals did it first. Or just because.

On the issues, too, voters face a profound, nay, a historic choice. It is a choice between a party that has run deficits for the last four years, and a party that would run deficits for the next five; between a party that negotiated free trade deals with the United States, Europe and Asia, and a party that negotiated free trade deals with Asia, Europe and the United States; between a party that held health-care transfers to the provinces to increase by no more than the rate of growth in GDP, and a party that has increased health-care transfers by no less than the growth in GDP.

It is a choice between a party that makes no secret of its opposition to electoral reform and a party that very successfully made a secret of it; between a party that repeatedly smuggled legislation past Parliament via gargantuan omnibus bills, invoked "time allocation" motions to cut off debate and held its members captive to the most rigid system of party discipline in the democratic world, and a party that said it would not do any of these things.

It is a choice between a party that, in its time in office, failed to build a single pipeline to tidewater, and a party that has failed, in its time in office, to build a single pipeline to tidewater; between a party that has no realistic plan to meet the targets for greenhouse gas emissions to which they both have committed, and a party that has a plan that is even less realistic.

It is a choice between the heartless Conservatives, who would turn refugee claimants back at the Canadian border without so much as a hearing, and the caring Liberals, who (as of this year's budget omnibus bill) would send them back even after they have been living here — again, without a hearing.

Do I exaggerate? Consider the vast differences between them on other issues, too numerous to mention, too obvious to discuss. On supply management. On regional development. On equalization, or employment insurance, or Quebec's Bill 21.

Or military procurement, as in the contest to supply the air force with a new fleet of next-generation fighter jets. The Conservatives, in power, famously botched the project: the competition was rigged from the start to favour Lockheed Martin's F-35. Whereas under the Liberals, the competition was rigged in Lockheed's favour only after it had been excluded from it.

Of course, elections are not just about the parties; they are as much or more about the party leaders. Here, too, voters will have to choose between two very different white middle-aged Catholic heterosexual males (themselves entirely unlike any of the white middle-aged Catholic heterosexual males — Dion, Martin, Chretien, Mulroney, Clark, Turner, Trudeau the elder — who preceded them).

It's not just a choice between a Liberal party leader elected by people who weren't Liberals and a Conservate party leader elected by people who weren't Conservatives — it's between a leader who has no experience of the struggles of ordinary people and a leader who has spent two-thirds of his adult life on the public payroll.

It's between a leader who would not reopen divisive social issues and a leader who demands they be reopened just long enough to declare them closed; between a leader who insists that same-sex marriage and abortion and marijuana remain legal and another who accepts that they will.

Perhaps the sharpest point of distinction between the two can be seen in that traditional test of Canadian leadership, foreign policy. The two leaders would fail to exert any influence on the United States or China in completely different ways. On defence spending, though neither would come close to meeting our NATO commitments, one would feel more badly about it.

Still, the two leaders are alike in one respect, I'll grant you. Neither wants anything to do with Doug Ford.

[Valmy]

That seems like the kind of empty-headed simplistic cynicism that turns functioning countries into banana republics run by corrupt strongmen.

[PRC]

Alberta's UCP removes the "Public" from "Public Education".

Innocent administrative change or nefarious shift in language to normalise the private, religious and charter schools putting them on the same footing as the formerly public ones?   

A move towards educational voucher system or even total privatised education? 

Seems weird from a government bent on reducing expenses and cutting red tape to make an administrative change that will increase costs.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/public-alberta-school-boards-1.5275561

Alberta government orders schools to remove 'public' from names, raising fears
Pamela Fieber · CBC News · Posted: Sep 08, 2019 6:18 PM MT |
Some accuse UCP of trying to blur lines between public and private schools

Alberta's UCP government has removed the word "public" from all Alberta school boards, affecting eight of 41 divisions across the province and leaving educators and administrators scrambling to figure out why.

Speculation on the reasons for the change, which took effect Sept. 1, ranges from it being just a minor detail to a more conservative alignment with Premier Jason Kenney's support for private schools and homeschooling, with public school funding threatened.

Colin Aitchison, the press secretary for Education Minister Adriana LaGrange, said the removal of the word was done simply as part of a streamlining process. The other 33 divisions in the province didn't use the word public in their names.

"The removal of the word public was done to solely simplify the naming conventions of Alberta's public school divisions," he said in an emailed statement.

"School divisions will still have the autonomy to brand themselves in a manner which they feel is appropriate for their division (e.g. prior to Sept. 1, Edmonton School District No. 7 branded themselves as Edmonton Public Schools. They will still be allowed to brand themselves as such)."

He also pointed to a similar change proposed by the Progressive Conservatives under then-premier Jim Prentice, then abandoned when an election was called.

'A lot of suspicion'

"It is important to note that this change was originally introduced by the former PC government in 2011 when the Education Act was initially brought before the legislature."

One political scientist tells CBC News it may be too soon to understand the reasons.

"It could very well be a small administrative change to the legal title of schools," said Duane Bratt, a political scientist at Mount Royal University. "There's a lot of suspicion. And so what could be normally seen as just a simple administrative move for further efficiencies, or for legal reasons somehow takes on a more insidious role."

The UCP campaigned on a promise to replace the existing, 40-year-old School Act with their amended Education Act.

"Right now, if you look at the Calgary Board of Education, the CBE, the word public isn't in there so we don't know what impact this will have," he said.

"But there has been suspicion of the Kenney government toward public education for a while. He is closely aligned with private schools, with homeschoolers. He never went to public education himself."

There are also issues around funding, with the recent MacKinnon Report, which recommends funding reductions, and the budget about to come out in late October.

"Meanwhile, schools are struggling to figure out how much money they actually have," Bratt said.

"I think the issue here is not so much the legal change, as the lack of trust and great suspicion and paranoia that people in public schools have to a very recently elected government.

"They're going to go, 'Why do they want to do this?' And the government says, 'Oh don't worry it's just a simple little change, you don't have to change your stationery or your messaging. This has no impact whatsoever.' But are we going to discover a year from now that this actually did have a major ramification?"

Name change will cost money

Lorrie Jess, president of the Alberta School Boards Association, says the ASBA is seeking clarity on what taking "public" out of school authorities' names will mean, and how the costs will be handled.

"It will cost money to change branding and letterhead and banking, and there is no funding attached," Jess said, adding that ASBA has been informed there will be a grace period for making those changes, through a letter from Curtis Clark, deputy minister of education.

"We have flexibility to change our names as we buy new buses, or as time goes by," she said. "But the legal names of school divisions, so the 'public school division' on the side of a bus, can stay. It can stay on everything for now. But as time progresses they want us to change it."

Barbara Silva, communications director with Support Our Students Alberta, finds the UCP changes alarming.

"I think it's really interesting that it is so specific and so small," Silva said. "So what that means to us is that it's a very deliberate and strategic ministerial order, because if it doesn't mean anything, why go about doing it at all? Why impose this new legislation on school boards to change their legal names?"

Silva believes it's all about privatization.

"They hope it flies under the radar with the public, but it's an incredibly deliberate, strategic plan to undermine public education, which is the first step in privatization," she said. "You undermine first, then you underfund, and then you privatize."

The Calgary Board of Education has never had the word public in its name. Calgary will now become the Calgary School Division.

A school board, Silva says, is unique, compared with a charter school or a private school.

"We have a democratically elected board, we have citizens run for trustee, we go to the polls every four years and we elect trustees in a democratic process," Silva said.

"Charter schools don't have democratically elected board. So again it's another way to conflate and confuse and blur the lines between public schools, charter schools, private schools, and we think it's very deliberate."

Silva points out that for a government intent on cutting red tape, this change is likely to increase it.

"That's what makes us realize that this is absolutely deliberate. This is absolutely something they are going forward with in spite of the fact that they prefer red tape reduction, because this is going to create a lot of red tape, a lot of work. And it's going to divert funds from the classroom."

CBE to discuss name change on Tuesday

Calgary's Board of Education has put the name change issue on the agenda for the next board meeting on Tuesday.  Silva hopes that's a sign that the CBE is ready to fight the changes.

"This is exactly why we elect the school board trustees, and school board trustees now need to start flexing the democratic muscle with which they were elected, and they need to start defending public education, and they should be having these meetings," she said.

Silva said Support Our Students Alberta has already held a meeting to get mobilized, and plans to hold meetings in Edmonton, Medicine Hat and Red Deer as well.

"It's talking about what the privatization movement looks like, and all the parallels, because people like to think this is happening in the States, this isn't happening here. But that's not true."

The eight school divisions to have the term public struck from their names are:

Edmonton.
Red Deer.
Grande Prairie.
Grande Yellowhead.
Buffalo Trail.
Medicine Hat.
Aspen View.
Fort McMurray.

The changes also remove all numbers from the names. For example, Grande Yellowhead Public School Division No. 77 loses both "Public" and "No. 77."

[Grey Fox]

Let's go!

[Barrister]

PCs re-elected in Manitoba.

[Valmy]

PCs re-elected in Manitoba.

So tired of PC culture!

But I am glad the province of your favorite hockey team remains under the control of your preferred political party

[Barrister]

PCs re-elected in Manitoba.

So tired of PC culture!

But I am glad the province of your favorite hockey team remains under the control of your preferred political party

The Progressive Conservatives have NEVER been my preferred political party.  Even when I was a campaign manager for the MB PCs in the 99 election in Elmwood.

But so glad that after 15 years or so they got out of the New Democratic yoke, and they seem set to stay that way.

[PRC]

Federal election starts today.

[PRC]

Vote Compass for the 2019 Federal Election:

https://votecompass.cbc.ca/

I ended up with:

Greens: 60%
NDP: 60%
Libs: 58%
CPC: 43%
PPC: (Did not Participate)

[Barrister]

CPC 70%
Libs 51%
NDP 38%
Greens 32%

And that was with me saying the government should impose a carbon tax.

[crazy canuck]

I was similar to PRC


Greens 63%

NDP 59%

Liberals 59%

Conservatives 45%

[Barrister]

It's behind a paywall, but apparently Ottawa is citing cabinet confidentiality and is refusing to assist with RCMP investigation into Lavalin investigation.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-ottawa-blocks-rcmp-on-snc-lavalin-inquiry/

This story is not going to go away...