With a possible election call only days away, it's starting to look like a zombie apocalypse out there.
The Cons and the NDP can see the Liberals coming for them and they're not happy.
They're terrified.
Jagmeet Singh is so afraid, he's still trying to bully the Governor General into cancelling the election, even before it's called.
And Erin O'Toole's foreign advisers have just about given up trying to revive his candidacy.
Which after attacking Trudeau for years, and demanding he resign every other day, makes him look like a chubby chicken.It’s time to worry about helping Canadians get back on their feet, the polls can wait until it’s safe.
— Erin O'Toole (@erinotoole) August 5, 2021
Now’s not the time for an election. pic.twitter.com/7ZSE6NGFIQ
All three parties seem to have levelled off, but the Liberals have a BIG advantage over the others.
These regional numbers seem to spell MAJORITY.
And not only that, the Liberals are the favourites of Canadians of ALL ages.
So much for the Tik Tok King...
Who the grubby Con media are still trying to portray as a serious candidate.
Or claiming that Trudeau has no right to call an election for obvious reasons...
They know what could happen to them if the Liberals are the winners.
But their claims that an election could fuel a Covid fourth wave are nothing but scaremongering, with so many Canadians vaccinated, and Elections Canada quite capable of dealing with every eventuality.
And as Bob Hepburn points out, there are so many good reasons to hold an election right now.
First, after criticizing the Liberals for the past 18 months over their handling of the pandemic, it’s time for opposition parties to leave their comfortable Parliament Hill offices and make their case to voters that they could do a better job.
Second, if a fourth wave of the pandemic is coming, as some experts predict, then sooner is better than later for an election. Few people would argue for an election in the midst of a major new outbreak. If that happened, Canadians could wait several more years for the next election. That’s a scenario that would sure enrage the Trudeau-haters among us.Third, it’s time to put an end to the current Parliament, which appears to be past its “best before” date.
Most minority governments run out of steam after two years. That’s when opposition parties start spending more time blocking legislation than they do co-operating with the governing party. Trudeau is right when he says the NDP, for example, “stood aside and watched” as the Tories worked in recent months to stall progressive pieces of legislation.
Stalling legislation like the ban on conversion therapy for which the Cons and the NDP can never be forgiven.
For nobody threatens the lives of gay kids and gets away with it.
Fourth, it’s time to clear the air on the troubled opposition parties. They all insist they can do a better job of running the country than the Liberals, but most have difficulty managing their own parties.
Fifth, if we can hold the Calgary Stampede, attend baseball and football games, see students go back to school and dine indoors at restaurants, then we can easily hold an election.
Since early 2020, five province and one territory have held elections. They include New Brunswick, B.C., Saskatchewan, Newfoundland, Yukon and Nova Scotia, which goes to the polls on Aug. 17.
Internationally, a total of 43 nations have already held countrywide elections in 2021, with dozens more having held elections last year, including the U.S.
Finally there's the biggest reason we need an election right now, the one Hepburn doesn't mention, and that's the climate emergency.
Justin Trudeau's Liberals are the only party to have a climate plan. It's a really good one, but it doesn't go far enough, for the opposition parties are more interested in playing cheap politics than fighting climate change.
So the only way Trudeau can get the plan to where it needs to be, is if he gets a majority.
It's that simple.
For Canada, for the planet, in the name of human decency, the Cons and their grubby NDP stooges must be defeated.
And the sooner the better...
34 comments:
If Trudeau is serious about the conversion therapy bill, why would he call an election and let it die on the order paper? For that matter, why didn't he introduce the bill when he had a majority from 2015-2019? It's not like we didn't know CT was bad back then. Why did he slow down its passage in the House by killing the bill introduced in March 2020 only to reintroduce it in October? Sounds to me like you can add the conversion therapy ban to Trudeau's list of broken promises.
Perhaps there's another reason Singh loves to ignore provincial jurisdiction: his covidiot counterpart in Ontario shot herself in the foot last night, and Charlie Dingus had to make a cynical run at interference for the PR shellacking she was in for. Not because it was the right thing to do but because "the Libs will drive a truck over our party". Implying that he would have been fine opening the door to anti-vaxers in a "progressive" party, as long as it didn't move the polls. Maybe the NDP should merge with the PPC.
This morning, Trudeau announced that he would consider mandatory vaccinations for federal civil servants, as Horwath had to issue a walkback with her tail between her legs. So far, crickets from the jester king of Tik Tok. Mr. Woke Bespoke Flat Broke is too busy enjoying the undeserved spotlight he's getting from cynical white men like Coyne and Ibbitson aiming to split the vote. This is your occasional reminder that Dougie and Jaggie had themselves a mini bromance during a "blind date" on TVO. Why am I not surprised.
Singh's not going to like the reason Ontario may get a childcare agreement next year, and that reason is because Horwath is the best gift the OLP could ever have. Notley meanwhile, can do a fine job of demolishing Kenney all by herself. Singh and his Jacobin jackboots are useless at best and dangerous at worst. Nobody needs the federal NDP, and anything positive can be and has been accomplished either without them or in spite of them. Well, OK, no one needs them except an utterly desperate Erin the Fool and his friendlies in the M$M.
Reuters suggests that Trudeau having such a commanding lead in the polls may work out to be paradoxically bad for him, but perhaps there's the possibility that the DipperCons will continue stepping on rakes. If Singh is dumb or craven enough to try and sabotage the childcare framework again, he'll face loud, unpleasant reminders of Jack Layton's betrayal. With all the statues of sacrosanct heroes being toppled, it's only fitting that Bon Jack face a historical reckoning of his own. A decade of darkness given to Canada by the NDP, which only the Liberals mercifully taketh away.
Elections are always a crapshoot and polls don't vote, so now isn't the time to be complacent. Keep calm and vote Liberal. A vote for the orange authoritarians is a vote for the MAGA Trumpers of the north.
An iron law of Canadian politics: When a politician states that we do not need an "unnecessary" election it means the data analysis team of the party that politician represents is saying they will lose such an election.
With my usual caveat about the public polls it is interesting that they all seem to be saying the Liberals would win if an election were held today. Even Angus Reid, which has a profound house effect for the Conservatives, are indicating that the Liberals are leading 35 to 30. If you account for that house effect and add two points to the Liberal score and subtract 4 points from the Conservative score then they are in line with many of the other polling companies out there.
hi anon@6:52 PM...What are you talking about? Justin Trudeau is the best friend LGBT Canadians have ever had, bar none. The bigger question is why is Jagmeet Singh so anti-gay. Is it because he claims he was sexually assaulted when he was studying martial arts. Or is it some weird religious thing? Or don't his Khalistani extremist friends approve of gay people? I don't know but thanks to people like you I am going to have to spend much more time exposing the real nature of the NDP....
You know Simon, you raise a very good point. I have yet to see anyone from the supposedly progressive NDP condemn the rancid homophobia that Cons have subjected Justin Trudeau to for the past decade-plus since he became an MP. It took a whole week for anyone from that party to issue any statement at all about the QAnon fanatic looking to become the Canadian equivalent of Lee Harvey Oswald. Even then, it was only Matthew Green who issued a tepid condemnation in the abstract about "political violence," while Singh made it all about himself. Angus, to no one's surprise, said nothing, and then went on to spend an entire year smearing Margaret. Seems they're not as "progressive" as they would have people blindly believe.
Perhaps their silence is due to the bog-standard class-exclusivist myopia of the dead-ender left, who reduces such matters as women's reproductive rights and LGBT equality to "identity politics," a supposed bourgeois distraction from their fantasy of eating the rich. All the ills, -isms and -phobias of the world can be explained by "economic anxiety" and solved like magic with a $5K/month UBI and forcible confiscation of every dime in Galen Weston's pocket. A nice idea to be sure, but it's got SFA to do with the price of tea in China or the price that LGBT people have to pay as they face intolerance from all levels of socioeconomic strata.
Or, perhaps it's something more insidious, and they have as much of a deep-seated, subtle bigotry problem as the Cons are more overt about. After all, the Bernie stans were and still are viciously misogynistic towards Clinton and Harris, and the Singh cult in Canada seems to enjoy riding their coattails. The Green party likes to project themselves as "progressives" even though polling shows them to have disturbing rates of xenophobia, racism and other prejudices in their ranks. So there are real questions about how sincere is the NDP.
Obviously, there's no one but Cons who would go so far as to actually mobilize or introduce bills to remove the hard-fought rights that LGBT people and women have striven to have recognized over the years. Nevertheless, it does not rule out the possibility, or even likelihood, that just as Trudeau said, simply out of spite to "own the Libs" the NDP would be content to let Cons do their worst as they "stand by and watch."
Hi Jackie....The NDP is becoming weirder and weirder. For years most of the comments I deleted were from Con supporters, but now about 30% are from members of the NDP cult of St Jaggy. It's strange how so many are still nursing the Great Disappointment of 2015, when they thought they were going to win, and instead went down like a lead balloon. I understand their frustration, but being a small third party their singular obsession with avenging the Great Disappointment by destroying Justin Trudeau seems to me to be totally pathetic, and counterproductive. The more Con they are, the more Canadians will reject them. And yes, Charlie Angus is the gift that keeps on giving...
Deflect much? Singh's NDP helped the Libs pass C-6 in the House, and the thanks they get is racist cracks about Sikhs? Now that the bill's in the Senate, I've really got to wonder about your priorities. Why is a House majority more important to you than getting the bill made into law?
Hi Ottlib...Yes, I thought O'Toole looked and sounded a little desperate. It was like it had been rushed together after the latest disastrous poll. Next the Cons will be praying for super spreader events so they can blame Trudeau. They really are diseased, and more American than Canadian, and I can't think of a better reason why we must try to destroy them in the upcoming election...
Anon Dipshit, first and foremost Simon didn't make a "racist crack about Sikhs". He asked a legitimate question of whether the identitarian separatist extremists Singh is said to be associated with, or supportive of, are anti-gay based on their religious views. But that's neither here nor there with regards to the focus of this post: the abysmal and downright abusive behavior of the NDP.
Why don't you explain why your obstructionist concern-troll party nearly sabotaged the medically assisted dying bill at the behest of a handful of authoritarian, Lysenkoist science deniers calling themselves "disabled rights advocates"? Have you forgotten all about the fracas over Bill C-7 and how it almost didn't meet the deadline thanks to your party's antics partnering up with religious extremist Cons? How the most vulgar hardcore NDP rank and file were comparing Justin Trudeau to Hitler and harassing people who suffer from incurable illnesses (including mental illnesses), and who were desperate to see this bill pass? A rewrite with additions that the NDP actually supported back in 2017, until it became convenient to cape for JWR and her ignorance of the constitution?
What about the navel-gazing dirtbag-left academics and the same Internet troll bandwagon who framed the C-7 debate as Trudeau signing a death warrant to execute his own mother? Really, have you no shame? That's really rich and carries the overwhelming stench of hypocrisy, considering Chuckles the clown had spent a whole year smearing Margaret's activism as nothing more than graft from a fame whore riding the coattails of her dead husband and influential son!
What about the toxicity that phony "progressives" on Dipper social media have been sabre-rattling about starting, inserting themselves into the upcoming consultation on the national autism strategy? Your cadre hired Kinsella to harass the parents of autistic children and spread lies that ABA is equivalent to conversion therapy. In doing so you gave ammunition to Ford to defund essential services that have helped these kids, because your Extremely Online activist cult have decreed these therapies to be "torture". What an absolute crock.
You have hijacked the language and tactics of the LGBT rights movement and even the Indigenous rights movement to further your bullshit, disease-mongering agenda of "woke Scientology." No wonder Horwath thought she had a slam dunk by catering to anti-vaxers. Cons don't have a monopoly on anti-science woo beliefs. In doing this, you condemn people to suffer needlessly, while you gaslight that their plight is a result of "Trudeau not caring" or being a Nazi who wants to kill the indigent cripple. Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting.
The NDP are as much a roadblock to progress as the absolute worst anti-vax and anti-science and anti-everything wingnuts of the right. Your hatred of Trudeau personally, and of small and big L Liberals more broadly, has made you into an enemy of everything you claim to hold dear. Take a good look at yourself in the mirror, that is if you even have a soul to reflect at all. Shame on you!
It’s another ‘electoral reform’ promise.
beware the drippers and trippers, they infected the body politic last time
Anon 10:48...The part you leave out is they supported the Conservative efforts in delaying the passing of Bill C-6 until the very last week of the Parliamentary Session, virtually guaranteeing it would bog down in the Senate and still be there when the Senate rose for the summer.
The NDP had numerous opportunities earlier in the Parliamentary session to support the government's efforts to pass the Bill but they did not. They waited until the 11th hour. It was a calculated move on their part. Probably so they could make the very argument you are making to try to convince Mr. Trudeau not to call an election.
Mr. Singh and the NDP deserve all of the crap they are receiving. The NDP used to be able to claim to be the "progressive conscience" of Canadian federal politics but that has not been a valid claim for over a decade. They are now just another political party playing the same political game all of the others are playing. The only problem is they suck at it.
Hi anon@10:42PM….You are the one who is deflecting by accusing anyone who criticizes Singh of being a racist. It’s pathetic and it won’t fly here. I’m not a racist and I don’t allow racist comments. As for Bill C~6, the NDP did eventually help the Liberals get it out of the Commons, but only because they had no choice, and not before they had slowed things down so the Senate had no time to pass it before the break. It was cheap politics and one of the reasons I would like the Liberals to get a majority. So the NDP can never play those Con games again…l
Hi anon@11:31PM….Electoral reform was sabotaged by the NDP, that went along with the Cons to demand a referendum which would have killed ER for a generation. It’s typical of everything the NDP does. It’s only interested in “getting” the Liberals even if good bills are sacrificed. No wonder they are a fourth party going nowhere…
Hi Steve….Tom Mulcair took the NDP far to the right of the Liberals, after the NDP gave us ten years of Harper. Now under Singh it’s just more of the same, and if they are not stopped they will cheerfully deliver this country into the hands of the Cons again….
Hi Jackie…Thanks for listing all the ways the NDP have betrayed the values of this country. Singh is a millionaire and a narcissist who only cares only about himself. Which is bad enough, but to make matters worse some of their supporters have turned into the ugliest kind of trolls. I’ve had to delete some comments that are so ugly and homophobic they could have come from the Cons. But as I always tell the O’Toole gang, if these DipperCon trolls think they can intimidate me, they’ve got another thought coming….
Hi Ottlib….Thanks for educating the DipperCons. They are bitter, they are desperate, and they are playing a very dirty game. And to play it they were willing to sacrifice gay kids, and they will pay for that. Singh is a poseur , and a shallow narcissist who lies all the time. And he will not get away with that dirty game. If the Con media wasn’t so intent on boosting the Singh cult to try to help the Cons by splitting the vote, they would have been exposed already. But rest assured they will be…l
The current government is only one no confidence vote away from an election. The Con propaganda machine will choose the time and place. Huge advantage for the Cons, table scraps for the NDP, disaster for Canada. Logically the NDP should have supported the Liberal agenda, because even if it was not perfect in their view it was a step in the right direction which could be improved upon in the future if Canadians liked the samplers. Instead they chose to delay legislation and play the politically motivated corruption propaganda game that only helped the Cons by masking out the real issues. From a distance it seems the NDP are willing to trash the Liberal agenda in order to secure second place when the Cons choose the time and place for their big win. Possibly they believe the Cons won't win a majority and if they can pick up a few more NDP seats their status would improve or perhaps they believe after a few Con years people will flock to them. Then again perhaps its just hubris. Who knows but the Liberals have no choice but to move on when its in their advantage. Covid 19 is not the end of the current upheaval and Canadians deserve a strong compassionate government to see us through the next phase. The NDP could have been part of the solution but at present seem more interested in fiddling while Rome burns.
RT
Hi Simon
I know you are only quoting Bob Hepburn but he, too, should not have included Newfoundland & Labrador in a list of provincial examples of elections held during the pandemic with the unstated/implied adjective "successful". The NL election was a procedural cock-up and an example of how not to hold an election under pandemic conditions. There's no question that safe federal and provincial elections can be held under current - or even slightly worse - conditions; just don't do what we did. Please.
In a majority government there's only one way to sabotage a government bill - from the inside. The Liberals killed electoral reform, period.
What I fear most is a situation like in California. The Dems in name rule but they are mostly republicans. Like the Liberal Party in BC. What happened to Chretrien was hard core repulicants won seats as liberals. There should be a litmus test to run as a liberal.
Anon 3:43...No Bill was tabled for Electoral Reform so it could not be killed by the government.
When the Liberals won in 2015 Justin Trudeau proposed a special committee to look at electoral reform. His proposal was to have the make up of that committee line up with the number of seats each party had in The House. Naturally, the other parties howled because that would have meant the Liberals would have had a majority on the committee. They believed the Liberals would use that majority to propose the ranked ballot option, the Liberals would then create a Bill to make that happen and then use their majority to make it law.
So after some pressure Justin Trudeau proposed the make up of the committee be according to the popular vote. Of course that meant that no party had a majority. What followed was predictable. All of the parties set out their positions of what they wanted electoral reform to look like and NEVER CHANGED THEM ONE IOTA. So this special committee went on for two years never resolving anything because none of the parties would do anything resembling compromise. After awhile it became obvious that none of the parties would agree on a new way of voting and the deadline Elections Canada gave for implementing a new system was fast approaching so the Trudeau government pulled the plug.
I am on the fence of whether agreeing to having the distribution of seats on the committee being along popular vote lines instead of number of seats in The House lines was a rookie mistake by Mr. Trudeau or a way to make certain that electoral reform would never happen.
Regardless, if Mr. Trudeau would have stuck with the original plan the 2019 election would have been the first election conducted using ranked ballots and the next election would be the same.
Of course, that would have pissed off he NDP and the Greens because they do not actually want electoral reform. They just want a Proportional Representation voting system because the believe (wrongly) that it would always make them the kingmakers in the coalition governments that PR electoral systems create. You see, the NDP have had 70+ years of electoral futility under the current system and they have now concluded that the only way they will ever be able to gain any power is to change the system.
Hi ottlib
Good summary! Additionally it should be noted that the Cons are masters at gaming the ranked ballot system in the selection of their leader by running posers that coordinate second and third choices. If Mr jackboots loses on the first round you should support Ms Holy Grail on the second round and if that fails vote for Mr nice guy on the third as he is actually one of us in disguise. Some systems try and prevent this by setting a minimum popular support level of 5 to 10% in order to gain party status but if there is a will there is always a way to game a political system. The Cons hire the best!
Its also ironic that the dysfunctional committee that could not reach a compromise and punted the process to a referendum was selected based on proportional voter representation.
RT
Great video https://www.unifor.org/en/whats-new/press-room/unifor-launches-tv-ad-cautioning-canadians-against-voting-erin-otoole
Hi Martin….Sorry about that. I forgot about what happened in Newfoundland and Labrador, so I just wrote down what Bob Hepburn said. That’ll teach me to rely on the MSM. 🙄 However I hope Elections. Canada can learn from that debacle, and that our high vaccination rates will offer some measure of protection….
Hi RT…..As they have done before, the NDP is taking a very short sighted view of the times we are living in. They don’t care if the Cons win the election with their help as long as they “get” the Liberals. They’ve done it before, gave us ten years of Harper, and they are not going to do it again. As you say, this country is going to need a strong but compassionate government to get us through the challenging times ahead, and the Liberals are the only choice….
Hi Ottlib….Thank you for educating that ignorant DipperCon. The ER movement has become like a small cult in this country, with blowhards like the senile Disaffected Lib calling it Trudeau’s “greatest betrayal.” When in fact most Canadians have rejected ER over and over again and with the exception of the NDP cult couldn’t care less. You explained what really happened brilliantly. And the only thing I would add is that by siding with the Cons and demanding a referendum, the DipperCons were setting themselves up for failure again. For if a referendum had been held at the cost of about a billion dollars, and had it resulted in the same result as the others, ER would have been dead for at least a generation. So I think it’s fair to say that rather than killing ER, Trudeau actually saved it….
Simon, as usual your graphics are a massive hoot; especially loved the Singh one, so appropriate!
Back to this, one underserved part of a potential election is the leaders' debate. I don't see O'Toole doing well here, he'll probably resort to personal attacks like Scheer did. Singh will try to corner him while looking cool, and I expect Blanchet to frame everything in a QC lens, while being the best speaker of the opposition. Will Anamie Paul even be there? Who knows.
MSM will definitely frame any election as being "unnecessary" and other such tripe, so it will be up to LPC to frame back by ensuring Canadians of all stripes, races and cultures can vote easily and quickly. I'm still predicting a Liberal near-majority (165-169 seats) and someone will cross over to make it a full house.
As for the CPC, the sooner it drips back into its mire, the better for all of us...
For everyone talking about electoral reform, coalitions, third party spoilers, and PropRep on here: I would just add that the current government of Austria has their governing IDU wunderkind in a strange bedfellows coalition with the Green Party. This is your occasional reminder that ecofascism is a thing that exists.
Here in the States (we don't have PropRep but our government would be a clusterfuck no matter what system we used), Krysten Sinema who is obstructing many of Biden's progressive proposals in the Senate -- first and foremost the crucial voting rights legislation currently stalled, and likely to die before the midterms -- was in the Green Party before she became a Democrat. It's well known that the US Green leader Jill Stein was at a dinner party with traitor Mike Flynn and other MAGA luminaries in Moscow.
This is the kind of chaos that third party saboteurs are prone to inflicting. As TikTok is a PRC spyware app, and the NDP base are young tankies prone to PRC disinfo, I think CSIS should keep an eye on "influencers" like Singh, lest they be conduits to sow similar discord in Canada as well. Layton was a craven bastard but I don't think even he would go so far as to grant an interview to Jacobin. If Singh was a leader worth his salt, he'd have censured Green and Gazan for being so reckless, and WaPo would shitcan Moscrop for hiring out to that commie porn rag. But with the NDP's increasingly populist tilt and the radicalization of its rank and file, they are primed to be a tinderbox that a confluence of bad actors could set off.
Even in supposedly utopian/idyllic Scandinavian countries, the PropRep system has seen countless xenophobic parties flourish and gain a foothold in their national parliaments. Cosplay revolutionaries yearn for Canada to be "more like the Nordic model," but in their zeal to discount so-called "identity politics," seem keen on ignoring the substantial proportion of voters who prefer their socialism to be a more national socialist kind.
PropRep still comprises the system in use in Germany that saw the "coalition" convinced it would rein in a certain other Austrian populist back in the day. After the accelerationist left had spent years fighting the centrists, of course, at which point their glorious workers' revolution would occur. That guy's party is banned for eternity, but the AfD -- the Nazis by any other name -- exist, and are roughly in the same position as the NDP and Bloc are in Canada right now. Actual communists, meanwhile, also have their share of seats. Merkel's retirement, the CDU's rightward shift, and her colleagues' openness to collaborate with the neo-fascists for cynical power grabs, means all bets are off as to what happens next.
France meanwhile, has a runoff/ranked ballot system that was specifically configured to sabotage the National Front/National Rally fascists in the final round. Unlike most of their partners in Europe, they do not use PropRep, which as seen above has allowed fringe kook parties to thrive -- just as Trudeau had warned.
Dippers still pushing for PropRep are doing so for their own gain and at Canada's peril. They do not care about Canada and they are most certainly not "woke" as they claim. They only care about themselves.
Hi Pierre...Thank you. I hope to have more fun with Jagmeet, but I have to be careful or the crazies will start calling me a racist, which I definitely am NOT. I just hate poseurs and serial liars. As for the election debate, I think both O'Toole and Singh will resort to personal attacks on Trudeau, because that's all they know what to do. But if Trudeau is prepared he can turn their lies against them, and absolutely destroy them in the French debate. I hope you're right about a majority, but with the Con media in full flight, I'm afraid that might be difficult...
Thanks everyone for such an interesting and lively discussion
‘I just hate poseurs and serial liars.’
Too easy.
The best reform would be a run off. We have seen how Dougie manipulated the ranked ballot. It is much easier to get a bunch of crazies to vote right than left. So you get every crazy out of the woodwork and then all those votes go to the Tool, nope. Second choice is popular vote. I lived in Austria for 7 years and it is utopia. Now this was 20 years ago so things change.
Anon@9:24PM….Yes it easy to call Jagmeet Singh a poseur and a serial liar. What should bother you is why you allow him to do that, and call anyone who criticizes him a racist. When the election begins you and your pathetic NDP cult members are in for a rude shock. I wasn’t planning to go after the Singh cult, but thanks to bullshit like yours I’ve changed my mind. Thank you.ðŸ¤
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