General Canadian politics thread

Nyktos

this happened

KilgoreTrout

The election can't come soon enough for me. If Harper's not going to win, I want him gone ASAP, and if Harper is going to win, then I don't want to have false hope for another month-plus. The waiting seems like the hardest part right now.

Also while I have no doubt that anybody other than Harper would be a lesser evil, a bit of Googling on the candidates' positions just now shows me that both Mulcair and even Trudeau (whom I'd previously thought wouldn't take this position, based on some other stuff he'd said) won't likely change Canada's policy regarding Israel. And one of the many, many things that I don't like about Harper is that he really does not give a shit about Palestinians. Perhaps that's another story for another thread, but it's something I care about a lot.

glennmagusharvey

Something that scandals unfortunately do is fade into the background.

Like, after a while, if it's not too huge of a problem, it becomes deemed old news and the electorate stops caring and goes back to its own thing.  This is often referred to as "rehab[ilitation]" of a politician's image/reputation.

If it is too huge of a problem, sometimes the politician in question can get replaced after some time.

Tatterhood

So this has been going around on Twitter. Honestly the article itself didn't shock me; this is pretty in-character for Harper. But what I was happy to see was that the people who retweeted it into my timeline were Americans. It's nice to know that the knowledge that Harper is literally Satan has started to spread outside the country.

Despite all that he still has a shot in the election, though...

KilgoreTrout

There are many things about Harper that piss me off, but the one I feel like talking about right now is the whole niqab thing.

You can read about it here.

I swear, if Harper wins this thing by fanning the flames of Islamophobia--flames which you'd think wouldn't even have ignited in the first place in a country as supposedly progressive as Canada, but which apparently have--then my faith in my fellow Canadians is going to die a death.

Tatterhood

Honestly at this point I've passed through the stage of being upset at Harper's niqab thing right into the stage of being tired of reading thinkpieces about how terrible it is that our politicians are talking about niqabs instead of serious issues.

Tatterhood

All Hail Our Lord and Saviour Justin

KilgoreTrout

It's definitely an improvement and I'm glad Harper's gone, but somebody pointed out that the Liberals supported C-51, so I can't be entirely optimistic. What I really want is a big shift back to the left, and what I'm worried we'll get is the status quo with a slight shift to the left on some things.

Tatterhood

KilgoreTrout wrote: »

It's definitely an improvement and I'm glad Harper's gone, but somebody pointed out that the Liberals supported C-51, so I can't be entirely optimistic.

Oh yeah the Liberals winning a majority is a bad thing by almost all measures. C-51 will almost certainly not be repealed, not to mention that Bill fucking Blair is an MP now, and majority governments in general are bad. I was desperately hoping it would end up minority with a stronger-than-predicted NDP, but no dice. Nonetheless, it's still a colossal improvement over Harper.

Taking bets now on how many party leaders we'll see resign tonight. One? Two? None until next week?

Edit: I forgot about Duceppe, so it could've been three. Though apparently Mulcair at least is not resigning (yet).