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[Royal_Phalanx]

Is Tom Mulcair even up to the task of leading the NDP now? I don't live in Canada but I've heard very, very good things about Jack Layton (RIP).

 

[Silexx]

Is Tom Mulcair even up to the task of leading the NDP now? I don't live in Canada but I've heard very, very good things about Jack Layton (RIP).

Tom Muclair has already stepped down as NDP leader.

 

[NetMapel]

as bad as the vote of no-confidence was,
the Liberals did need to get punishment for the Sponsorship Scandal handling

re-electing the Liberals DURING and AFTER the Sponsorship Scandal would have emboldened the Separatists, the Bloc and support for Sovereignty

Support for Sovereignty plummeted like a rock as soon as the Liberals were sent to the Penalty Box.

Stephen Harper had almost no history with them; the Bloc was completely unable to gain any traction against Harper..


I am a Liberal but they did need a REHABILITATION phase to clean up their party image.

I'm a Federalist 1st, Liberal 2nd

I have no affinity with Liberal or NDP. We should have gone with NDP that election. Instead, we got Harper That made me extremely bitter.

 

[gutter_trash]

I have no affinity with Liberal or NDP. We should have gone with NDP that election. Instead, we got Harper That made me extremely bitter.

NDP coddled separatists...


So no

 

[Kinsei]

Is Tom Mulcair even up to the task of leading the NDP now? I don't live in Canada but I've heard very, very good things about Jack Layton (RIP).

There's a reason that there is an NDP leadership election this October. Of the current and expected candidates I'm hoping that Jagmeet Singh becomes the party leader.

 

[NetMapel]

NDP coddled separatists...


So no

Was that why there was the orange wave in Quebec 10 years ago? I distinctly remember not wanting to vote for Mulclair in the recent election because NDP was too Quebec-centric. Guess that trend started under Jack Layton? Boy we got no good choices =_=

 

[AuthenticM]

NDP coddled separatists...


So no

Still better than the cons.

 

[imBask]

Was that why there was the orange wave in Quebec 10 years ago? I distinctly remember not wanting to vote for Mulclair in the recent election because NDP was too Quebec-centric. Guess that trend started under Jack Layton? Boy we got no good choices =_=

The orange wave came naturally. To me they were the only left option with a chance at winning that year, so I voted for them

 

[CazTGG]

Canada's IC is about as anti-Russia as the UK. Trudeau is probably very disliked by the Kremlin.

So...the LPC is going to get hacked next election?

Also, since I forgot to post this here from the other thread: Toronto's Mayor doesn't see the problem with blackface!

Sorry guys but for me personally, I cannot forgive NDP and Jack Layton for giving us 10 years of Harper. As much as I like some of their policies, we were in the dark ages for 10 years because of them

Now seeing what's going on down south, we need to basically hold on the Liberal party with our dear lives so the conservatives don't pull the same stunt here. Ideally I'd like NDP to be the official opposition party but that's not likely.

Not their fault more people voted for Harper.

 

[maharg]

Sorry guys but for me personally, I cannot forgive NDP and Jack Layton for giving us 10 years of Harper. As much as I like some of their policies, we were in the dark ages for 10 years because of them

Now seeing what's going on down south, we need to basically hold on the Liberal party with our dear lives so the conservatives don't pull the same stunt here. Ideally I'd like NDP to be the official opposition party but that's not likely.

This was an impressive demonstration of throwing a dead horse and some bats into a room to see what would happen, I've gotta say.

 

[Royal_Phalanx]

Why isn't there a massive shitstorm about going back on electoral reform which was a key part of the Liberal platform? It helps the Right more than anything because even though Canada mostly votes centrist and centre-left it splits the vote which is how you got 10 years of Harper.

It's how we in the UK are getting Hard Brexit because somehow ignoring 48% of your country's voters is OK because they're concentrated in cities and don't vote Conservative anyway so fuck them.

Canada is one of those countries I want to know more about (yes, I'm thinking of trying to move there one day), so I'm asking all these random questions.

 

[Pancake Mix]

About M-103, despite it not having any force of law, I feel it is wrong to specifiy discrimination against a single religion, it seems to give it a special class. That religion, likely the fastest growing in Canada due to immigration... should not be free of criticism by getting special protection.

I don't enjoy agreeing with the right-wing media, but it just feels like a negative and backwards step.

 

[Kinsei]

Why isn't there a massive shitstorm about going back on electoral reform which was a key part of the Liberal platform? It helps the Right more than anything because even though Canada mostly votes centrist and centre-left it splits the vote which is how you got 10 years of Harper.

It's how we in the UK are getting Hard Brexit because somehow ignoring 48% of your country's voters is OK because they're concentrated in cities and don't vote Conservative anyway so fuck them.

Canada is one of those countries I want to know more about (yes, I'm thinking of trying to move there one day), so I'm asking all these random questions.

This sums it up pretty well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti5e6Rh_I3E

 

[Abelard]

Sorry guys but for me personally, I cannot forgive NDP and Jack Layton for giving us 10 years of Harper. As much as I like some of their policies, we were in the dark ages for 10 years because of them

Now seeing what's going on down south, we need to basically hold on the Liberal party with our dear lives so the conservatives don't pull the same stunt here. Ideally I'd like NDP to be the official opposition party but that's not likely.

Why are you blaming the NDP for giving a good fight, and not Ignatieff who had the charisma of a brick and the general incompetence of the Liberal party?

 

[Pancake Mix]

Why isn't there a massive shitstorm about going back on electoral reform which was a key part of the Liberal platform? It helps the Right more than anything because even though Canada mostly votes centrist and centre-left it splits the vote which is how you got 10 years of Harper.

It's how we in the UK are getting Hard Brexit because somehow ignoring 48% of your country's voters is OK because they're concentrated in cities and don't vote Conservative anyway so fuck them.

Canada is one of those countries I want to know more about (yes, I'm thinking of trying to move there one day), so I'm asking all these random questions.

You're quite right, it's interesting in Canada because the Liberals are closer to the Lib Dems though. In the UK there's more of an ideological divide between the two largest parties (minus the New Labour era), Labour and the Tories.

It will have consequences because of the united right, whereas all other voters are kind of lumped in, even if they're slightly different. In the 90's there were two (regionally powerful) centre-right parties, so there was an era in Canada when it also affected the right.

It should be pointed out though that the NDP is healthier than the Lib Dems are. Still 44 seats in a house with ~half the seats of the UK House of Commons. So while they desperately want proportional representation, at their best (in 2011) they can win just over a third of seats and form an official opposition. The difference is that the NDP can win a good number of rural and suburban constituencies, they don't rely exclusively on urban votes. Rural voters in Canada don't always trend right outside Alberta, very often a plurality will vote for anybody.

So while the FPTP system might work slightly better with multiple parties in Canada, really at the end of the day, yes, this ensures there will be more Conservative majorities in Canada with less than 40 percent of the popular vote, absolutely, and many of us could see this coming a mile away. Way too many people took that promise at face value when it was clear that if they won a majority, they'd backtrack on it because they also like winning majorities with less than 40 percent of the popular vote.

One thing that is good about FPTP is that it reduces the impact of the Quebec Bloc (Bloc Quebecois), a separatist party, but an alternative mechanism would still be preferable in my opinion.

 

[Royal_Phalanx]

You're quite right, it's interesting in Canada because the Liberals are closer to the Lib Dems though. In the UK there's more of an ideological divide between the two largest parties (minus the New Labour era), Labour and the Tories.

It will have consequences because of the united right, whereas all other voters are kind of lumped in, even if they're slightly different. In the 90's there were two (regionally powerful) centre-right parties, so there was an era in Canada when it also affected the right.

It should be pointed out though that the NDP is healthier than the Lib Dems are. Still 44 seats in a house with ~half the seats of the UK House of Commons. So while they desperately want proportional representation, at their best (in 2011) they can win just over a third of seats and form an official opposition. The difference is that the NDP can win a good number of rural and suburban constituencies, they don't rely exclusively on urban votes. Rural voters in Canada don't always trend right outside Alberta, very often a plurality will vote for anybody.

So while the FPTP system might work slightly better with multiple parties in Canada, really at the end of the day, yes, this ensures there will be more Conservative majorities in Canada with less than 40 percent of the popular vote, absolutely, and many of us could see this coming a mile away. Way too many people took that promise at face value when it was clear that if they won a majority, they'd backtrack on it because they also like winning majorities with less than 40 percent of the popular vote.

One thing that is good about FPTP is that it reduces the impact of the Quebec Bloc (Bloc Quebecois), but an alternative mechanism would still be preferable in my opinion.

Yep, the one good thing about FPTP is it keeps the Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pens of the world out. Front National would be more dangerous if France had full on Proportional Representation. I'd prefer something like Single Transferable Vote to be honest.

 

[Silexx]

You're quite right, it's interesting in Canada because the Liberals are closer to the Lib Dems though. In the UK there's more of an ideological divide between the two largest parties (minus the New Labour era), Labour and the Tories.

It will have consequences because of the united right, whereas all other voters are kind of lumped in, even if they're slightly different. In the 90's there were two (regionally powerful) centre-right parties, so there was an era in Canada when it also affected the right.

It should be pointed out though that the NDP is healthier than the Lib Dems are. Still 44 seats in a house with ~half the seats of the UK House of Commons. So while they desperately want proportional representation, at their best (in 2011) they can win just over a third of seats and form an official opposition. The difference is that the NDP can win a good number of rural and suburban constituencies, they don't rely exclusively on urban votes. Rural voters in Canada don't always trend right outside Alberta, very often a plurality will vote for anybody.

So while the FPTP system might work slightly better with multiple parties in Canada, really at the end of the day, yes, this ensures there will be more Conservative majorities in Canada with less than 40 percent of the popular vote, absolutely, and many of us could see this coming a mile away. Way too many people took that promise at face value when it was clear that if they won a majority, they'd backtrack on it because they also like winning majorities with less than 40 percent of the popular vote.

One thing that is good about FPTP is that it reduces the impact of the Quebec Bloc (Bloc Quebecois), a separatist party, but an alternative mechanism would still be preferable in my opinion.

Yeah, FPTP did wonders of keeping the Bloc in check in '93 when they formed the Official Opposition.

 

[Pancake Mix]

Yep, the one good thing about FPTP is it keeps the Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pens of the world out. Front National would be more dangerous if France had full on Proportional Representation. I'd prefer something like Single Transferable Vote to be honest.

But sadly it gives the SNP almost every seat in Scotland, when in 2015 they should have had only half, given its 50 percent support.

Yeah, FPTP did wonders of keeping the Bloc in check in '93 when they formed the Official Opposition.

The Bloc had nearly 50 percent support in Quebec at one point in the 1990's. Of course they'd win most seats there then. It was a different era.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebec_referendum,_1995

We can all be very glad this never came to pass, but it was that close. Let's be honest, 50 percent plus a single vote is the only way to do it too...and ignoring that would not have been good.

Canada in the 1993 election was a very different place. Let's not forget that the third party was also an effectively regional party, the Reform party (Western Canada).

Now, with lower Bloc support, FPTP actually ends up costing the Bloc seats that MMP would give them. But you're right, it ebbs and flows. I don't think FPTP is worth it, and as we see when nationalist parties become huge, it actually enables them further, you're right.

 

[NetMapel]

Why are you blaming the NDP for giving a good fight, and not Ignatieff who had the charisma of a brick and the general incompetence of the Liberal party?

I'm saying none of the parties are perfect. NDP cozy with Quebec and Conservatives seem more social conservative than fiscal conservative. Liberal I guess is closest to my views but yeah they ran a crap candidate. The two left parties split votes and gave conservatives 10 years under Harper. It was just a no win situation

 

[Pancake Mix]

I'm saying none of the parties are perfect. NDP cozy with Quebec and Conservatives seem more social conservative than fiscal conservative. Liberal I guess is closest to my views but yeah they ran a crap candidate. The two left parties split votes and gave conservatives 10 years under Harper. It was just a no win situation

I'm not sure you want fiscal conservatism either if you value stuff like the strength of Health Canada...so I don't think that criticism is much of a criticism.

As for the NDP, they go where the votes are. They win plenty of rural constituencies also. As a federalist party, of course they're happy to gain Quebec support.

 

[Silexx]

But sadly it gives the SNP almost every seat in Scotland, when in 2015 they should have had only half, given its 50 percent support.



The Bloc had nearly 50 percent support in Quebec at one point in the 1990's. Of course they'd win most seats there then. It was a different era.

The main point here is that FPTP allowed a party that had popular support in just one province to form the Official Opposition of the entire country.

 

[Razorskin]

Can gutter's Trudeau fanfiction be kept to this thread only please?

 

[pr0cs]

Can gutter's Trudeau fanfiction be kept to this thread only please?

It's bloody embarrassing really

 

[mdubs]

Can gutter's Trudeau fanfiction be kept to this thread only please?

"Find a man who looks at you the way that gutter_trash looks at the Liberal Party"

It writes itself

 

[firehawk12]

lol I was wondering if people saw that thread.

 

[Pancake Mix]

lol I was wondering if people saw that thread.

Trying to block it from my mind. As amazing as Canada is, that is not at all how the free world works. Canada is only slightly more prominent than Australia.

 

[CazTGG]

Can gutter's Trudeau fanfiction be kept to this thread only please?

According to the CPC's latest motion, no.

 

[matthewwhatever]

There's a reason that there is an NDP leadership election this October. Of the current and expected candidates I'm hoping that Jagmeet Singh becomes the party leader.

If Singh runs and doesn't win, I think it'll count as a pretty big upset. He may be the only one without a seat, but in a one member, one vote system he has a few huge advantages over Julian/Angus/Caron/Ashton. Personally, his sex education stance disqualifies him as someone I could support, but I think he's got a very good shot at winning.

About M-103, despite it not having any force of law, I feel it is wrong to specifiy discrimination against a single religion, it seems to give it a special class. That religion, likely the fastest growing in Canada due to immigration... should not be free of criticism by getting special protection.

I don't enjoy agreeing with the right-wing media, but it just feels like a negative and backwards step.

You know how to tell that this is a garbage argument? Because the House passed a motion condemning anti-Semitism less than two years ago, and not a single person complained about it protecting a certain class of people, or about a religion getting special protection from criticism. Complaining now is just thinly-veiled bigotry.

Why isn't there a massive shitstorm about going back on electoral reform which was a key part of the Liberal platform? It helps the Right more than anything because even though Canada mostly votes centrist and centre-left it splits the vote which is how you got 10 years of Harper.

It's how we in the UK are getting Hard Brexit because somehow ignoring 48% of your country's voters is OK because they're concentrated in cities and don't vote Conservative anyway so fuck them.

Canada is one of those countries I want to know more about (yes, I'm thinking of trying to move there one day), so I'm asking all these random questions.

1) It didn't resonate because the only people who care about it are NDPers and Greens. It comes off as complaining by people who can't win an election one way, so they're trying to make an end run around democracy and change the rules to make it easier for them (while simultaneously making it a little too obvious that they want to do it to screw over Liberal and Conservative voters).

2) I don't know the UK demographics and riding breakdowns that well, but I can tell you that in Canada, rural ridings generally aren't that important. Even the Conservatives need to win urban (or at least suburban) voters if they want to have any chance at winning. Parties don't pander to rural rednecks because it's not a viable electoral strategic. The Reform Party spent two decades moderating their positions and tamping down a lot of their worst instincts in order to win power (and, of course, taking over one of the existing mainstream parties), and then lost an election when it became clear that they were reverting to their racist ways. We complain about the Conservatives here a lot -- and for good reason, because most of their policies and politics are terrible -- but because Canada is so large and so diverse, they're really forced to moderate themselves in ways that conservative parties elsewhere don't, and that's partly thanks to FPTP.

 

[Pancake Mix]

You know how to tell that this is a garbage argument? Because the House passed a motion condemning anti-Semitism less than two years ago, and not a single person complained about it protecting a certain class of people, or about a religion getting special protection from criticism. Complaining now is just thinly-veiled bigotry.

You're unfairly labelling. Anti-Semitism is racism, whereas a blanket statement about a religion exclusively is more concerning. It's the fastest growing religion in Canada (probably the only growing one too...) and is not generally under threat. I don't think it's a good precedent to give a religion special protection. Identifiable groups can get that in Canada under certain circumstances (the indigenous peoples for example), but not exclusively religious groups.

 

[Infinite Stars]

Can gutter's Trudeau fanfiction be kept to this thread only please?

I approve.

"Gutter looked longily at the Prime Minister, eagerly awaiting the phrase he had waited so long for. He did not need to wait long, for the Prime Minister turned to the camera, smiled, and said 'Fuck the NDP, Bloq and Conservatives, I am now King of Canada.'

Gutter rejoiced."

 

[TheRealTalker]

yeah I mean the whole Trudeau world fan gazing thing is overblown

as overblown as the other spectrum of the whole anti Trudeau thing

it seems some people are delusional at polar extremes

 

[matthewwhatever]

You're labelling. Anti-Semitism is racism, whereas a blanket statement about a religion exclusively is more concerning. It's the fastest growing religion in Canada (probably the only growing one too...) and is not generally under threat. I don't think it's a good precedent to give a religion special protection. Groups can get that in Canada under certain circumstances (the indigenous peoples for example), but not religious groups.

Right. Because "anti-Semitism" is clearly about all Semitic peoples, and not just one specific subset who happen to share a religion.

I'm sorry, but if you honestly believe that, and you truly think that condemning Islamophobia just weeks after that specific phenomenon led a white supremacist terrorist to shoot up a mosque, then...yeah, I'm fully comfortable calling that bigotry. You can couch it in concern trolling and handwaving and fretting about not normally agreeing with right-wing media all you want, but your words and your intent speak loud and clear.

 

[Pancake Mix]

Right. Because "anti-Semitism" is clearly about all Semitic peoples, and not just one specific subset who happen to share a religion.

I'm sorry, but if you honestly believe that, and you truly think that condemning Islamophobia just weeks after that specific phenomenon led a white supremacist terrorist to shoot up a mosque, then...yeah, I'm fully comfortable calling that bigotry. You can couch it in concern trolling and handwaving and fretting about not normally agreeing with right-wing media all you want, but your words and your intent speak loud and clear.

Jewish people have an ethno-religious connection. It's both an ethnicity and a religion. It's not exclusively religion, and we're also talking about a sometimes persecuted group of 14 million in a world of 7 billion people.

In contrast, to pretend that an exponentially growing religion (that does not have an ethno-religious connotation) of 1.5 billion+ people is in danger because of one horrific event is absurd, and that religion didn't have to be named in my view. It was unnecessary, and you can hand-wave that all you want, but isolated incidents are not facts on the ground.

It's concerning.

 

[matthewwhatever]

Jewish people have an ethno-religious connection. It's both an ethnicity and a religion. It's not exclusively religion, and we're also talking about a sometimes persecuted group of 14 million in a world of 7 billion people.

In contrast, to pretend that an exponentially growing religion (that does not have an ethno-religious connotation) of 1.5 billion+ people is in danger because of one horrific event is absurd, and that religion didn't have to be named in my view. It was unnecessary, and you can hand-wave that all you want, but isolated incidents are not facts on the ground.

It's concerning.

When you're complaining about a fast-growing religion in Canada that has a lot of non-white people, I think I know exactly what you find concerning.

 

[Pancake Mix]

When you're complaining about a fast-growing religion in Canada that has a lot of non-white people, I think I know exactly what you find concerning.

No, all I see is that you have no legitimate criticism of my rational belief that there's no evidence that it's under general threat in Canada or that it had to be listed by name, and go right to illegitimate labelling.

No religion should be free from criticism, and despite having no force of law, it has an implication that it should be free from criticism...

 

[CazTGG]

Jewish people have an ethno-religious connection. It's both an ethnicity and a religion. It's not exclusively religion, and we're also talking about a sometimes persecuted group of 14 million in a world of 7 billion people.

In contrast, to pretend that an exponentially growing religion (that does not have an ethno-religious connotation) of 1.5 billion+ people is in danger because of one horrific event is absurd, and that religion didn't have to be named in my view. It was unnecessary, and you can hand-wave that all you want, but isolated incidents are not facts on the ground.

It's concerning.

More concerning than the rise of Islamophobia that saw six people die due to some Trump-inspired terrorist? More concerning than several candidates in the Conservative Party of Canada leadership using Islamophobic language ranging from proposing to reinstate the niqab ban or use coded language like "anti-Canadian values"? More concerning than the Conservative Party's 2015 campaign's constant attacks that preyed on people's fear of a religion that they know jack about? To reiterate: M-103 is not a law that prevents you from criticizing, it's a motion to look into how to combat the growing Islamophobia in Canada. If your concern is on "muh free speech to criticize the Moose lambs!" instead of ensuring the safety of Muslims in Canada to practice their religion without their constitutional rights being violated or killed because of some alt-right arsehat who thinks they're right in ending their life, words fail me in describing how screwed up your priorities are.

P.S. Let's not pretend that race doesn't play a part in Islamophobia, in particular with xenophobes who assume a given ethnicity means someone is a Muslim and therefore are bad.

 

[matthewwhatever]

No, all I see is that you have no legitimate criticism of my rational belief that there's no evidence that it's under general threat in Canada or that it had to be listed by name, and go right to illegitimate labelling.

No religion should be free from criticism, and despite having no force of law, it has an implication that it should be free from criticism...

The only place it has that implication is in the fevered imaginations of bigoted right-wing nutjobs who think that they're some brave defenders of free thought when they rant about the Mooslem plot to take us down from the inside. Using your logic -- and I use that term incredibly loosely -- let's take a look at what other terrifying, non-legally-binding Private Members Motions are coming (or, in worse cases, have already passed!) that might be a challenge to the Canadian way of life:
- Tamil Heritage Month (and why don't we have a White Heritage Month, right?)
- Spring Festival (once we start recognizing some Chinese celebrations, where does it end? Clearly, with full-fledged authoritarian communism.)
- Instruction to the Standing Committee on Health regarding violent and sexual online material (which could take away porn!)
- Italian Heritage Month (those Italians can be awfully swarthy sometimes)
- German Heritage Month (could the fascist tones be any more obvious here?)

Chilling stuff.

Plus, you know, there's the fact that the House responded to a petition back on October condemning Islamophobia by, uh, passing a supporting motion unanimously. That said, I've probably just missed the multicultural gestapo breaking down people's doors for daring to criticize Islam and other religions. Pity they couldn't get to Alexandre Bissonnette before he was sufficiently emboldened by anti-Muslim hatred to go and murder 6 people and injured another 19, but hey, those people totally had it coming, thinking they deserved to go and practice their religion in peace.

 

[Pedrito]

If anything, the motion is making the deplorables (Ezra, Kellie, their twitter warriors, the old senile nationalists in Quebec) lose their shit so it's a good thing in at least one way.

Childish of me but whatever.

 

[CazTGG]

If anything, the motion is making the deplorables (Ezra, Kellie, their twitter warriors, the old senile nationalists in Quebec) lose their shit so it's a good thing in at least one way.

Childish of me but whatever.

"Won't someone think of the poor, racist Islamophobes?"

 

[Ether_Snake]

So...the LPC is going to get hacked next election?

Also, since I forgot to post this here from the other thread: Toronto's Mayor doesn't see the problem with blackface!

I don't know, maybe they'd try to pay the NDP or promote Quebec independence. I know a few years ago I used to see RT billboards in Montreal. There were two kinds: one questioning global warming, the other asking if extra-terrestrial beings exist.

 

[Pedrito]

I don't think Russia would bother. Canada isn't big enough or in their sphere of influence. Unlike in Europe, there also isn't a major political party that is pro-russia or at least anti-sanctions. The NDP is somewhat anti free trade so they could work with that, but they're also supposed to be the defenders of human rights.

They'll just continue sending trolls to the Globe and Mail and CBC websites whenever Russia is in the news.

 

[gutter_trash]

the next target for the KGB Chaos machine is France's up coming Presidential election this spring.

Marine Le Pen is so in the take full of rubles.

Wikileaks already started a smear campaign geared towards Emmanuel Macron.

 

[maharg]

If you want to know what Russia thinks are useful Canadian wedges, you can just go look at their Canada tag on RT.

 

[Infinite Stars]

I don't think Russia would bother. Canada isn't big enough or in their sphere of influence. Unlike in Europe, there also isn't a major political party that is pro-russia or at least anti-sanctions. The NDP is somewhat anti free trade so they could work with that, but they're also supposed to be the defenders of human rights.

They'll just continue sending trolls to the Globe and Mail and CBC websites whenever Russia is in the news.

Honestly, the only party I could see Russia backing would be the Bloq, and the circumstances required for a Bloq government would be beyond reality. They'd want to create divides in the country, and promoting a"Quebec first" party to the point where they even get near 2nd would be one hell of a divide.

 

[gutter_trash]

Honestly, the only party I could see Russia backing would be the Bloq, and the circumstances required for a Bloq government would be beyond reality. They'd want to create divides in the country, and promoting a"Quebec first" party to the point where they even get near 2nd would be one hell of a divide.

journalists in Quebec prize journalistic freedom really highly. They don't like Putin at all.
From his homophobia, wife beating being legal, jailing opponents, poisonning spies and curruption

so don't expect FAKE NEWS to gain any traction in that province

 

[Apathy]

I don't think Russia would bother. Canada isn't big enough or in their sphere of influence. Unlike in Europe, there also isn't a major political party that is pro-russia or at least anti-sanctions. The NDP is somewhat anti free trade so they could work with that, but they're also supposed to be the defenders of human rights.

They'll just continue sending trolls to the Globe and Mail and CBC websites whenever Russia is in the news.

We're lucky that because of our disputes for the arctic, no party can hold friendly views with russia and not be instantly disqualified from holding power. We're the last line of defense for santa claus.

 

[CazTGG]

Since we're talking Russia: Trudeau and Putin in a boxing match a la Rocky IV to resolve the tension between North America and Resurrected Soviet Russia. Who wants to see that?

 

[Apathy]

Since we're talking Russia: Trudeau and Putin in a boxing match a la Rocky IV to resolve the tension between North America and Resurrected Soviet Russia. Who wants to see that?

I do, but Putin seems like a sore loser whos going to drop a nuke on us after he looses

 

[Mr.Mike]

Andrew Coyne: Hysteria from Conservatives over harmless motion on Islamophobia

Conservatism used to have some claim to being a coherent political philosophy. Of late it has become a series of dares. The most extreme voice will lay down the most extreme position, then challenge others to endorse it.

As often as not this has nothing to do with conservatism. It is rather a kind of moral exhibitionism, populist virtue-signalling, in which the object is to say and do the most intolerant or ill-considered thing that comes to mind — anything that might attract the condemnation of bien-pensants in the media and elsewhere, whose opposition becomes proof in itself of its merits.

The willingness to court such controversy in turn becomes the test of political purity. To demur, conversely, can only be a sign of cowardice, or worse, liberalism, a heresy that that would seem to have overcome much of the conservative movement, to judge by the ever-lengthening list of the excommunicated.

So we come to the latest of these blooding exercises, the “debate” over Motion 103, a private member’s motion introduced by Liberal MP Iqra Khalid. In the fevered imaginings of its online discussants, #M103 is decried as a bill that would forbid any criticism of Islam, if not the first step towards imposing Sharia law. I only wish I were exaggerating.

This hysteria campaign has been whipped up by exactly the people you’d expect, and pandered to by people of whom you might have expected better, including several Conservative leadership candidates. Pierre Lemieux has denounced it as “an attack on free speech.” Maxime Bernier asks whether “it is a first step towards restricting our right to criticize Islam.” Lisa Raitt, Andrew Scheer, and Erin O’Toole have all come out against it, while Kellie Leitch, bless her heart, has set up a petition to “Stop Motion 103,” complete with a blue-eyed model with a gag over her mouth.

The only candidate to say he will vote in favour of the motion is Michael Chong. For this he has been excoriated as a sellout; it rather confirms him as a man of judgment and conscience. There is simply no reasonable construction of the motion that can support the claims made of it. It is not a bill, for starters: it is a simple motion, an expression of opinion, of no legal force or effect. It does not call for any ban or restriction on speech of any kind.

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Yes, of course, all religious groups should be free of discrimination and hatred. But it does no disservice to the others to pay particular attention to one, at a time when that group is particularly exposed to both. After the slaughter of six Muslims at prayer in Quebec City, people of goodwill, not to say common sense, would understand why it might be timely for all of us to offer some assurance to members of that community.

The Tories approach a point of no return

This week’s debate over ‘Islamophobia’ highlights the need for the Tories to root out the fringe forces rapidly dumbing down their party

There are quite a few lessons in civic hygiene that might be drawn from the jamboree of bigot-baiting and mob incitement attending to the shabbily-drafted but otherwise sensible Liberal motion on the contested subject of “Islamophobia” that has preoccupied the House of Commons this week.

Most obvious is that the Conservative Party of Canada has reached an event horizon of indecency. It is a point of no return from which a great many respectable people in the party’s rank and file, along with the Conservative MPs backing a substitute anti-bigotry motion of their own design, can flinch no longer.

While the term “Islamophobia” is a wholly inadequate and often disingenuously-applied description of the gangrene at work here, the Conservatives cannot simply let it go on spreading inward from the party’s fringes.

It is a pathology that several Conservative leadership contenders have been brazenly happy to traffic in, most recently in response to Liberal MP Iqra Khalid’s modest but unhelpfully ambiguous anti-Islamophobia motion, which asks the House of Commons for little more than an acknowledgement of the worsening public climate of hatred and fear across the country, and a standing committee to study ways the government might make a dent in systemic racism and religious discrimination, “including Islamophobia.”

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There have been so many transparently baseless and jackass alarums raised about Khalid’s motion that it is pointless to enumerate them all here, and in any case they will flourish regardless of the facts. Because of this, it will require a great deal of patience and moral courage among Conservatives to at long last get around to rooting out the idiot bloc in their midst.

But it can be done. Leadership candidate Michael Chong has been bravely candid about the faddish pseudo-populist stupidities that have dumbed down the party’s leadership race, owing in no small way to the vanity candidacy of television personality Kevin O’Leary. And Chong showed some serious backbone this week by coming out in support of Khalid’s motion.

At the same time, interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose, Saskatchewan MP David Anderson and Ontario MP Scott Reid have raised intelligent and reasonable objections to the motion, directed mainly at its loose language and reliance on the woolly term “Islamophobia.” Their objections are not far apart from those raised by the eminent human rights lawyer Irwin Cotler, a former Liberal justice minister. Cotler has suggested it would have been better if the motion had referred to “anti-Muslim” bigotry instead of Islamophobia.

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It’s true to say, as Scott Reid does, that seemingly benign injunctions against “Islamophobia” have been put to the squalid purpose of placing the Muslim religion and the practices of authoritarian Islamic regimes off limits to criticism. But it’s also fair to say that “anti-Muslim bigotry” doesn’t sufficiently capture the full-throated paranoid lunacy animating the nutcase wing of the Conservative support base these days.

“Racism” doesn’t quite cover it. “Hatred” doesn’t quite get at it. Whatever term you like, it’s more than merely ironic that those who make the most hysterical claims about clandestine Islamic conspiracies at the centre of Justin Trudeau’s government are also the ones shouting the loudest that an irrational fear of Islam isn’t even a thing.

It’s not as though the Liberals are blameless in all this. They could have welcomed O’Toole’s efforts at reaching out to find a compromise, but they didn’t. And the Liberals do seem quite content to have the Conservatives squirming and chafing against the appearance that the reason they object to the term Islamophobia is that they themselves are Islamophobic, whatever that might mean. It is not as though it bothers the Liberals that the Conservatives are stuck with the crazy talk coming from several of the leadership candidates these days.

Trudeau may have given away more than he intended last week when he was confronted at a community meeting in Iqaluit about why he reneged on his electoral reform promises. Raising the spectre of proportional representation opening the door to “fringe” parties, Trudeau asked, rhetorically: “Do you think that Kellie Leitch should have her own party?”

Clearly, Trudeau doesn’t want that. For starters, it would mean decent Conservatives couldn’t be tarred so easily with the indecencies committed by the party’s fringe factions. It would mean bigot-baiting the Conservative Party would be that much harder to do. In the meantime, it’s up to the Conservatives to get themselves sorted, and after the sordid events of the past few days, their options are limited:

Isolate, quarantine, amputate or purge.

 

[Pancake Mix]

Honestly, the only party I could see Russia backing would be the Bloq, and the circumstances required for a Bloq government would be beyond reality. They'd want to create divides in the country, and promoting a"Quebec first" party to the point where they even get near 2nd would be one hell of a divide.

Ugh, actually that's a scary thought. Just for the reason that it would reduce stability, Putin's Russia would probably try to help Quebec separatism. One thing that prevents it is that the "Clarity" Act apparently requires a super-majority rather than an actual simple majority, so it would never happen.

Forget forming a government, the Bloc could never do that, obviously they're only in one province. They don't need that to become a problem, just the rise of their provincial equivalent.