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Canadian PoliGAF - 42nd Parliament: Sunny Ways in Trudeaupia
- Thread starter matthewwhatever
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matthewwhatever
Member
I think the CPC are going to do their best to build Singh up. They know a strong NDP is their ticket back to government, and most CPCers I know were desperately hoping he'd win.
It'll be a huge test for Scheer, though. I don't think he'll be able to contain his party's more regressive elements. I mean, he can't stop his party from attacking women and indigenous people...what chance does he have to stop them from being freaked out by a brown guy with a turban?
I think this is a great result for the NDP. I think the party needs to get back to what Layton started in being the party for urban and suburban Canada and Singh is the guy to do that.
I think Singh was the only candidate amongst the four that could genuinely stand a chance of threatening Trudeau with at least dropping down to minority status in 2019.
The criticism of Singh as a secret centrist Liberal is pretty clearly bs if you have a look at his platform. He supports the standard NDP promises that we've seen the party always support, such as universal childcare and pharmacare and electoral reform, and beyond that he supports decriminalizing all drugs, which other leadership candidates declined to support.
Look at his tax platform. These are solid progressive proposals.
I think Singh was the only candidate amongst the four that could genuinely stand a chance of threatening Trudeau with at least dropping down to minority status in 2019.
The criticism of Singh as a secret centrist Liberal is pretty clearly bs if you have a look at his platform. He supports the standard NDP promises that we've seen the party always support, such as universal childcare and pharmacare and electoral reform, and beyond that he supports decriminalizing all drugs, which other leadership candidates declined to support.
Look at his tax platform. These are solid progressive proposals.
There's a chance the CPC's attempts to build Singh hurt them in the process and knock them out of official opposition status, but Singh needs to make sure the federal NDP is more competitive in the prarie provinces for that to happen unless the federal NDP comes back in Quebec.
killer rin
Member
So, considering Singh got above 50%, they likely won't continue into further rounds... right?
Random Human
They were trying to grab your prize. They work for the mercenary. The masked man.
Nah, theyll completely ignore him.
It's done. Singh is the new NDP leader.
Buba Big Guns
Banned
Definitely is! Awesome result
Yup.
killer rin
Member
Awesome
Thus sparing us the stupid multi-week announcement structure.
It was strained enough when the CP waited a half-hour between announcements at some points.
matthewwhatever
Member
According to Chantal Hebert, Nantel leaving is almost a sure thing. Reading her description, it sounds like he was just looking for a reason to leave.
As for a seat, he seems to be waffling between waiting until 2019 and going for Raj Grewal's Brampton seat, or trying ASAP via a by-election or getting a current MP to resign. The problem for the NDP is that Grewal won by a pretty big margin, so that would be a tough fight, and that there are very few safe NDP seats elsewhere he could parachute into.
As unpredictable as Quebec can be, I think the Orange Wave is dead. I'm also skeptical that the NDP will be competitive in the prairies next election -- Angus probably would've been a better choice for that, since he's from a rural riding. I think Singh makes them really competitive in the GTA (which is where they may threaten the CPC) and Greater Vancouver, and pretty much non-existent everywhere else. That's not terrible, since there are a lot of seats there, but like Sean said upthread, it's a pretty high-risk, high-reward strategy.
Prax
Member
Glad Singh is the new leader just for the image of it alone. Plus he seems like a great guy.
I'm normally a Liberal Party supporter for the most part, but his platform for the NDP sounds generally good too, even if some parts of it may hit some brickwalls (e.g. not sure capital gains tax raises to 75% would ever fly unfortunately).
I'm normally a Liberal Party supporter for the most part, but his platform for the NDP sounds generally good too, even if some parts of it may hit some brickwalls (e.g. not sure capital gains tax raises to 75% would ever fly unfortunately).
If the Liberals are smart and are a "bigger picture" type of people, they'd look into doing something about electoral reform. Jasmeet winning the NDP race takes some of that youth market away from the Trudeau Liberals, and when you've got a situation where the Liberals are either fielding weak candidates or are on par in popularity with the NDP, who else benefits but the CPC?
So it's going to essentially require the liberals crushing all of the other parties in Quebec, the NDP being more competitive in the GTA and greater vancouver, the CPC doing a bit worse in the praries mostly because of the Liberals to lose officially opposition status.It essentially requires a perfect storm for the federal NDP to form official opposition status again now. I wonder how compeittive Singh will make the federal NDP in the next election. I think he could make the federal NDP a bit more competitive in Edmonton.
If Nantel is just a malcontent looking for a way out, paradoxically that's arguably less of an issue than if he was an otherwise loyal trooper who found Singh and the other Anglo candidates unacceptable.
I don't think he has any realistic choice but to get into Parliament as quickly as viable. To my mind, he can either get an incumbent NDP MP to step aside temporarily with the understanding that Singh will run in a different seat in 2019, or else just move into that seat.
There's plenty of precedent for the former -- Mulroney, Chretien and Clark (in 2000) all did it, and I don't think Harper lived in Calgary Southwest when he succeeded Manning in 2002 either. Stockwell Day in 2000 permanently adopted his BC riding, by comparison.
Vancouver East or Vancouver Kingsway seem like the ridings the NDP currently holds that would be most compatible with Singh's strengths, and they're both pretty solid for the party.
I still think the cons are too stupid to ignore Singh.
Add to that the racist elements in their backbench as well as the racist elements of their own constituents, and the "he's a terrorist" crap is going to come out. That white lady that was being racist directly at Singh last month was like 100% a conservative voter
Add to that the racist elements in their backbench as well as the racist elements of their own constituents, and the "he's a terrorist" crap is going to come out. That white lady that was being racist directly at Singh last month was like 100% a conservative voter
I think Singh should wait until 2019 to get a seat. Spend the time going around the country, talking with people and rebuilding the NDP apparatus. Get someone like Cullen to be the point man in parliament.
Cullen pointed out when he endorsed Singh that Trudeau spent less time in parliament than Mulcair did, and Trudeau won in 2019.
Cullen pointed out when he endorsed Singh that Trudeau spent less time in parliament than Mulcair did, and Trudeau won in 2019.
Of course primary residences would be exempted from his estate tax plan. This to me is a great demonstration of the influence the upper-middle class, and not just the 1%, wields in politics and uses to protect their position. With such an estate tax implemented we'd see people buying really expensive houses to protect their wealth, similar to how the capital gains tax exemption for primary residences does.
It would be very unpopular to get rid of the primary residence exemptions, but of all parties I'd hope the NDP would maybe at least limit it to some cap that didn't just create what is basically an unlimited TFSA for a single real estate asset.
firehawk12
Subete no aware
I wonder if all the anyone-but-Singh people will come around. lol
I think that the Liberal swelling of support in the prairies is pretty well dead.
The love affair that left-wing voters in the prairies had with Trudeau ended as soon as they formed government, and dislike of him for keeping nearly nearly none of his left-wing aimed campaign promises (pot legalization is really low on the totem pole here in that regard) makes Liberals a decidedly untenable choice for left-wing voters that are acclimated to the NDP like they are in Alberta, Saskatchewan and BC. And with no other viable choice, left-wing voters in the prairies will vote NDP, in spite of any discomfort some might have over Singh's race.
That will likely mean certain ridings will swing further towards the CPC, but in places where the Liberals uncharacteristically surged in the prairies, you'll see them swing to the NDP in the next election by virtue of a complete distaste for the Trudeau government and an actual chance at an NDP MP if the left-wing can be galvanized into doing so.
Whether that will mean they can actually capture the seats still remains to be seen.
Remember when he was considered a frontrunner for the CPC leadership?
When you consider the amount of boots they had on the ground in the province, when in past elections they didn't even have to TRY to get the numbers they did, yeah, they were fighting tooth and nail to keep their votes. Had they campaigned like they usually did (non-existantly), the result would have been worse.
I didn't claim anything, just that there's been talk, most of it unsubstantiated, but where Singh's money was coming from demographically was also unsubstantiated, so...
And you yourself admitted that permanent residents can donate and gain party membership, so what's stopping a single person from donating a large amount of money to a party and candidates that they think will give them what they want from a political party in the interest of their powerful friends or their employer? I even admitted that such things, while fully plausible as I outlined, would never be enough to outright influence the party's ultimate decision making, but it doesn't hurt to do something.
So, to be clear, you're saying that high voter turnout unanimously favoured the Liberals and NDP, and that their loss of votes doesn't reflect disillusionment with the CPC?
matthewwhatever
Member
Behold the collapse.
I know the election is two years away, but I think predictions of the Liberal Party's demise might be a wee bit premature.
Read the beginning of what you quoted again, then look at the prairie numbers, and realize that the data actually bears out my point, in that the support of the Liberals based on voting was higher in 2015 than it is now. Never mind that they lump SK and MB together. Besides, the data points provided don't tell the whole story, when you consider that there's nothing in there about the PM's approval rating, nor a line graph showing the provincial support over time.
EDIT: Here's a look at a Mainstream poll in June of Trudeau's national popularity by province:
matthewwhatever
Member
I mean, we know that Singh's donors were concentrated in the Toronto suburbs. If you want to argue that he was getting huge donations from the white Conservatives living in the GTA, knock yourself out.
And a single person can give $1,550 to a party, $1,550 to riding associations/nomination candidates, and $1,550 to leadership contestants. I'd say that's what's stopping anyone from giving "a large amount of money to a party" in exchange for political favours. You really think you can buy that much influence by donating less than $5,000/year to a party?
The Liberals gained 4m+ votes over 2011. The CPC lost 200k votes. Even taking into account the fact the NDP lost 1m votes, I'm going to say that yes, the high voter turnout in 2015 favoured the Liberals.
You're claiming that Trudeau's popularity has cratered in Western Canada, specifically in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. To prove this, you're using a chart that shows his favourability is at +18 in Manitoba, and +3 in Saskatchewan. The Liberals aren't losing Goodale's seat as long as he's running, and the Liberal seats in Winnipeg -- apart from KildonanSt. Paul -- were all won by pretty significant margins. If you're going to make an argument that there's a NDP tidal wave hiding in the numbers, prove it, rather than hand-waving away all existing evidence in favour of your own grand pronouncements and anecdotal stories.
Of course. Housing equity is the third rail of Canadian politics. Canada has propped up the housing industry with so many incentives that tons of Canadians have based their whole retirement strategy around housing. At this point it's political suicide to suggest actions that would directly reduce the equity of the broad middle class. Only Ashton suggested any changes to how we tax primary residences.
A major contributor to the housing bull run now is baby boomers, which have seen their subsidized investments in housing do great, who now believe housing is a 'can't fail' investment, do everything they can to give their kids cash gifts and help their kids get into the housing market.
It'll be a long, long while until politicians are able to unwind this. Some sort of cap on max capital gains is a good start but I think a lot of things (such as a housing bubble collapse) will have to happen before that becomes politically feasible.
As an example of how politicians are loath to touch this issue, here's a recent quote from newly elected NDP BC Premier Horgan, a guy who was elected because people were pissed off about the housing market, on the housing market:
Am I the only one who thinks that Real Estate shouldn't be the nest egg that everyone depends on? I've talked to so many people that have retired recently about their houses, and most of their issues were the same: a person still needs a place to live after they've sold their primary residence.
I mean, sure, the primary residence has zero capital gains on it, but the cost of buying/renting another property upon retirement -- which often involves downsizing or a reduction in lifestyle -- is simply throwing all of your gains away for nothing.
Not to mention the fact that downsizing while actually retaining enough gains to have a comfortable retirement often means moving neighbourhoods or perhaps even cities as NIMBYs fight to keep any sort of densification out of single family neighbourhoods and runaway property speculation inflates housing valuations (Condos outside of Downtown Vancouver are now commanding $1300/sqft!). Why would anyone in retirement years want to move away and be forced to throw away their established social network and the life they've grown comfortable with?
Downsizing problems aside there is the issue that real estate is an awfully big bet on a single market. Your house is probably in the same local market that is shared with your employment, so a local economic crisis is going to hurt your employment and your home equity/retirement savings. Persons that are going further and buying investment condos in the same town are doubling down on the same bet again. All of this in the same currency as well.
A more balanced and hedged investment strategy would be to invest in some things that are disconnected from your location and employment and currency, so if the Canadian economy takes a dive, your investment portfolio may not.
Who needs a house when you can have a well-diversified portfolio?
But no, certainly not. Garth Turner has been blogging almost daily for years now mostly bitching about this (and taxes).
It is a third rail, but it's also probably the biggest issue facing Canada right now. Housing affordability is in itself a huge issue, but it also has a huge connections to other issues like inequality, social mobility, poverty. Broader housing policy also has huge implications on environmental issues and social integration.
As long as a powerful middle class strongly opposes a huge increase in the supply of housing other housing affordability policies like lower minimum downpayments or the ability to borrow from your RRSP for downpayments only really serve to inflate the price of housing. While seemingly counter-intuitive I think the best "politically feasible" strategy to take would be to stop instituting policies to try and make housing more affordable that don't increase supply.
This is why the CPP is invested mostly outside of Canada as well.
Precisely. My entire portfolio is disconnected from the Albertan economy, so I'm quite immune to local economic factors. I feel kind of bad for a few acquaintances, as their real estate investments are treading water at the moment...
Random Human
They were trying to grab your prize. They work for the mercenary. The masked man.
In terms of the earlier discussion about the NDP and CPC, one thing that's clear watching tonight's coverage of the NDP race is that the CPC are probably going to have a disadvantage next election due to running the most boring man alive against Trudeau and Singh, who seems mildly charismatic and has a good story.
A crucial first step to resolving this issue would involve disconnecting people's retirement plans from their home equity. Perhaps this could be achieved by gradually instituting a federal land value tax that is used to fund some sort of retirement or basic income.
At some point a lot of single family homes would have to be rezoned to higher density housing, and that in of itself might meet a lot of resistance. I can also see the Toronto Green Belt being undone with a PC government, which would be legitimately good for housing affordability but very bad environmentally.
KernelPanic
Member
He's going to regret this one I think:
https://twitter.com/thejagmeetsingh/status/802734505920524289
https://twitter.com/thejagmeetsingh/status/802734505920524289
We're already at this phase, huh? That was quick.
This absolutely. The government needs to end the incentives around housing. These inequitable incentives only benefit people of established wealth, whose parents are able to gift them the big down payments required to get on the housing ladder. These incentives simply fuel demand, which increases the price of housing.
Much of the funding for all this housing support of course comes from the the tax dollars of renters, many of which may never be able to afford a down payment.
There is no reason that the government should be involved in any of this. The government's housing policy should be focused on solving problems the free market can't solve, such as creating homes for the homeless and helping end poverty, not helping middle class people buy yet another investment condo.
One of the best things the Liberal government has done to date has been to increase the scrutiny banks must place on persons getting mortgages. This is a basic first step, but the government needs to go a lot further than this.
matthewwhatever
Member
I don't always agree with Eric Grenier, but his analysis of the NDP vote is really interesting. Basically, it seems likely that Singh won on the first ballot because Angus' supporters just didn't vote:
I just don't understand why people would join a party and then not vote for leader, but...well, here we are.
Also, buried at the bottom of this story, there's an interesting tidbit about the NDP's finances: it says they're more than $5m in debt, which is at least $2m more than I'd read elsewhere. If that's true, that's...really, really bad. Since the 2015 election they've been averaging around $1m in donations per quarter (one quarter went as high as $2m, but the last two quarters were both under $1m). Obviously, they've been hurt by not having a permanent leader for more than a year, but if they're trying to get out from a $5m hole, that puts them well behind the LPC and CPC in terms of preparing for 2019. I don't think the Liberals will pull a Harper and drop the writ a month and a half early, so the spending limit should only be $20m or so instead of the $50m it was in 2019, but still -- it's not a great position to be in.
Honest question: like what? The Liberals are coming out with a National Housing Strategy later this fall, so they're going to be doing more on it soon, but I'm curious as to what people think they should include.
I just don't understand why people would join a party and then not vote for leader, but...well, here we are.
Also, buried at the bottom of this story, there's an interesting tidbit about the NDP's finances: it says they're more than $5m in debt, which is at least $2m more than I'd read elsewhere. If that's true, that's...really, really bad. Since the 2015 election they've been averaging around $1m in donations per quarter (one quarter went as high as $2m, but the last two quarters were both under $1m). Obviously, they've been hurt by not having a permanent leader for more than a year, but if they're trying to get out from a $5m hole, that puts them well behind the LPC and CPC in terms of preparing for 2019. I don't think the Liberals will pull a Harper and drop the writ a month and a half early, so the spending limit should only be $20m or so instead of the $50m it was in 2019, but still -- it's not a great position to be in.
Honest question: like what? The Liberals are coming out with a National Housing Strategy later this fall, so they're going to be doing more on it soon, but I'm curious as to what people think they should include.
I don't even support Castro and yet I think that's a reasonable assessment of his rise to power and subsequent popularity.
Grenier seems like he's missing the more obvious answer.
Seems likely to me that it's not that Angus' signed up supporters didn't decide at the last minute to not vote for him for some reason, but more that the existing NDP base simply voted for Singh.
* The Liberal housing budget calls for $11.2 billion over 11 years. ~$1 billion a year divided across all Canada is basically nothing. It needs to be dramatically more.
* The reason that purpose built rentals have died out while condo development has become the norm is because the Liberal government of the 90s ended tax incentives that made rental development profitable while at the same time condos appeared. Right now condos are the obvious more profitable choice for developers. The Liberals should look into how they can rebalance this, as purpose built rentals are more affordable for renters.
* RRSP Homebuyers Plan is an incentive for housing that juices demand. One could get rid of that.
* Government owned Canada Mortgage and Housing (CMHC) insures mortgages and this takes the risk off of banks. This frees up banks to be more liberal with their lending practices, able to lend to more people, which increases demand. Michael Chong floated the idea that the CMHC should get out of this business and let banks take on all the risk. I think this is an idea worth looking into.
* End the 50% tax break on capital gains from non-primary real estate. There is vaguely a justification for a tax break on capital gains from equities due to double taxation (lol not really), but there's really no justification for why capital gains on investment real estate shouldn't be 100%.
This change would make investment condos a worse investment, which would decrease demand from speculators and lower prices for people who simply want to buy property to live in.
Tangential but related to housing:
* Holy fucking shit get the CRA to actually crack down on the people who are obviously avoiding taxes.
KernelPanic
Member
I'm just referring to future attack ads based on this, you can just see this coming.
It's not me condemning Singh or anything.
I said demographically, not geographically. You do know the difference, right?
It's telling that you don't consider $1550 "a large amount of money".
And no, as I already said twice, I don't think it can buy that much influence.
Looking at the numbers more diligently, the bulk of that increased voter turnout was in voters under 35, but it was higher in all age demographics, as well.
What you also see is that the increases in voter turnout that favour the Liberals were in areas where they are consistently strong.
But I'll concede to the data.
From the CBC article:
Pollsters are showing a consistent year-over-year decline in his popularity since he was elected.
And the sharpest declines are in areas that Liberals have the most support. Granted, they're still high, but a fall is still a fall, and none of his behaviour or the behaviour of his cabinet suggests that this trend is going to change.
This last part is the most interesting, though:
You're likely to see that support wane or vanish based on who was just elected to lead the party.
With all that said, support has been high for Trudeau, but when several polls say he's losing support, I'm inclined to believe them. And with the fate of the NDP being a complete unknown since early 2016, not knowing what the alternative would be was likely a significant boon at the time.
This also goes without saying that a poll can only tell you so much, whereas I actually live in the middle of the prairies and when you talk to people, it accentuates the reality more than the polls are capable of.
I believe time will play this all out. I'll be revisiting this discussion in a year or two to see which one of us had it right.
This isn't the US, we don't have near the same relationship with Cuba that the US does, so I doubt this would make waves like you think it might.
Morrigan Stark
Arrogant Smirk
Oof. But Trudeau posted something similar didn't he?
Well, Trudeau put out a statement instead of a tweet, for one. The statement itself raised a fair bit of controversy from your usual suspects along with more understandable concerns that felt simply calling Castro "extremely divisive" didn't do justice to the mass of human rights abuse that occurred when Castro was the leader of Cuba (he later clarified that Castro was a dictator when asked about the statement). There was also some highly cynical remarks that Trudeau was being easy of Castro since Justin's father and Castro got along famously but quite frankly I find little value in the words of people whose biggest criticism of Justin Trudeau is the man he's related to.
I don't think the Castro homage is a weak spot. I mean what he posted is true and that doesn't mean he approves of his dictatorship and the crimes he committed.
I feel what will be more damaging to him will be stuff like when he campaigned for Sikh to be exempt from wearing helmet on motorcycles. People will spin this as trying to have his religion influence his politics and this won't go well in some area like QC.
I feel what will be more damaging to him will be stuff like when he campaigned for Sikh to be exempt from wearing helmet on motorcycles. People will spin this as trying to have his religion influence his politics and this won't go well in some area like QC.
matthewwhatever
Member
The problem with this explanation is that Angus performed well below where both donations and polls had him. Mainstreet's initial polls from the race were based on samples heavily skewed towards the previously existing member base, and those had Angus well in front, with Singh in dead last. Once they finally got the current member list, Singh shot up into first place, but Angus was still hovering in the 25-30% range, depending on how you counted the undecideds. That means either a) Mainstreet got it consistently wrong, on multiple polls across a 6+ month span, which doesn't seem likely, given their fairly strong track record; or b) Angus did a terrible job of getting his voters out .
To be fair, Angus' abysmal GOTV ran into Singh's apparently stellar GOTV, since the overall turnout of 52% is roughly what parties can expect for leadership elections, and if Angus had gotten his voters to turnout to the same extent that Singh, Ashton and Caron got theirs, it would've been a much closer race.
The first few I agree with, though I imagine that it's always a challenge to get more money for everything. And I'm sure that CRA, who have already been looking for ways to go after tax avoiders and cheats, will start looking at housing the more stories like that pop up.
I honestly barely understand capital gains taxes, but from what little I know, I can't imagine real estate owners -- particularly smaller landlords -- would be too happy about 100% taxes. It'd certainly lower the cost of housing, but I can't see there being any political will for a 100% tax.
The only thing I'm opposed to is taking CMHC out of mortgage insurance. I feel like keeping the government involves make it easier to dictate the terms of rules surrounding who gets mortgages. If it's off-loaded to the banks, they might be more strict...or they might be even more lenient, since we've seen south of the border what happens when you loosen mortgage rules. Different country, different banking regulations, but still -- I can see the argument for keeping it public, rather than not.
I don't think we'll see many attack ads focused on Singh. The Liberals will want to the election as being them vs. the Conservatives, and they tend not to explicitly attack the NDP like that, because they want to keep soft NDP voters in the tent. The Conservatives won't like it, but their desire to exploit it (and their general fear of The Other) will be tempered by their need for a stronger NDP. The Conservatives want soft-Liberal/NDP voters to swing to the NDP, and it's hard to do that if you're pushing the notion that Singh is secretly a Castro-loving commie.
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