Maple Fief Forever: Canadian Politics 2025

1235712

Comments

  • I will gladly welcome the final death rattle of the Obtario Liberal Party.

    I remember hearing that in 1990. Voters are more mobile in their allegiances these days, so who knows what may happen?
  • It will be third place and not an official party in the Legislature for three elections in a row.

    That hurts.
  • It will be third place and not an official party in the Legislature for three elections in a row.

    That hurts.

    A well deserved fate for the party that brought us the disaster that was McGuinty/Wynne.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    It will be third place and not an official party in the Legislature for three elections in a row.

    That hurts.

    A well deserved fate for the party that brought us the disaster that was McGuinty/Wynne.

    Are you cool with them being supplanted by the NDP as the rulers-in-waiting?
  • stetson wrote: »
    It will be third place and not an official party in the Legislature for three elections in a row.

    That hurts.

    A well deserved fate for the party that brought us the disaster that was McGuinty/Wynne.

    Are you cool with them being supplanted by the NDP as the rulers-in-waiting?

    Far be it from me to speak on @sharkshooter 's behalf, but in recent weeks I have had occasion to break machiatos and moccachinos with friends of mine in Liberal and NDP circles, anxious to talk of their prospects in the upcoming provincial election. I am biting my tongue holding back from telling them that "We're Number Two!! We're Number Two" is not the best victory chant imaginable.
  • edited February 7
    Sigh, we will never agree on this Augustine but it bears repeating. There is a large gulf between Number 2 and 3, particularly for the Ontario Liberals. Being Number 2 means being Official Opposition, getting the best times in Question Period and most importantly getting more media coverage which is the oxygen of politics. Number 3 position is distinctly less desirable and more uncomfortable I assure you. The Ontario Liberals aren't even an official Party in the Legislatyee which is even worse.

    Moreover Ontario has what essentially amounts to a two-stage election on the left. There is a Progressive Primary and then a Take DDown the Tories round, The NDP as won the Progessuve Primary since 2019.
  • We’ve been round this Mulberry bush before, but my view is that the long-term prospects of both parties are going to turn on their ability to take seats (back) from the Conservatives. This is obviously a work in progress for the Liberals, but as things stand the NDP are not really doing much better.

    I just looked again at the 338 numbers updated yesterday. They have 101 seats for the Conservatives to 12 for the NDP (down from 31 in 2022) and 8 for the the Liberals (constant with 2022). Of course this could all change but we are already well into the campaign…

  • @Marsupial -- your analysis of where Ontario is this week is not far off mine. Our only difference is that I focus on a preferable goal of getting to the cabinet table, where decisions are made (in Ontario, at a detail level generally handled by senior managers in the federal scene); being in second place is next best for the reasons you outline and, should one's choice be second or third, second is clearly preferable. But I have always been puzzled by activists' focus on this, rather than on getting to first.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    Trump now says he's imposing 25% tariffs on Canada tomorrow.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    Steel and aluminum.
  • It's back to the bronze age!
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    It's back to the bronze age!

    [Insert cheap joke about American religion.]
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    Ford is heading to DC, if he's not there already, to meet with lawmakers and businesspeople, to deliver the obvious messages.

    Crombie and Stiles say Ford should not be politicking during an election, the counterpoint to which is that Ontario faces an economic emergency with Trump's tariffs. Apparently, Ford is going down with other premiers.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    Apparently, it's on.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    stetson wrote: »
    Apparently, it's on.

    As in, the tariffs have been signed into law.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    edited February 11
    Just watched a statement by Ford on YouTube from a few hours before the tariffs hit.

    There was a lotta talk in the comments section about how Ford should stop insulting Mexico, but when you listen to the speech, what he's saying is that Canada is stronger than Mexico, and so can't be bullied as easily. Rather than that the the Mexican position is wrong.

    Though I have heard him say more uncomplimentary things about Mexico in the past few weeks. I wonder what his game is there, exactly.
  • We saw Ontario's Super Bowl ad here (about 3 and a bit hours from the Canadian border) on Sunday. I don't know if it aired nationally. The gist of the ad was, "we're friends, we have a great trading relationship, let's keep it that way." Was the ad money well spent?
  • Probably not.

    Trump imposed these same tariffs during his last term, so this isn't new.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    Probably not.

    Trump imposed these same tariffs during his last term, so this isn't new.

    I was living outside of Canada at the time. Were the first-term tariffs as drastic as these ones?

    The first round was the one where we retaliated by banning Florida oranges, right?
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    We saw Ontario's Super Bowl ad here (about 3 and a bit hours from the Canadian border) on Sunday. I don't know if it aired nationally. The gist of the ad was, "we're friends, we have a great trading relationship, let's keep it that way." Was the ad money well spent?

    A few months back I met an American guy from Idaho who was dating a Canadian woman, and he started waxing maudlin about how "We're basically the same people, it's only the border that divides us."

    I worry that ads like the one you describe will perhaps contribute to the sorta misapprehensions exhibited by that gentleman, which could in turn help validate annexationist sentiment among Americans. Overall, I think boisterous boo-ing of the Star Spangled Banner at hockey games is sending the more pertinent message at the present moment.

    (Though maybe both tactics could both work in tandem as a good cop/bad cop thing?)
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    I also think that Canada should hold a referendum on a simple question like "Do you want Canada to become part of the USA?" The results would be overwhelmingly negative, which probably wouldn't shut up Trump, but it would go some way toward stopping Democrats, centrists, mainstream media from giving any legitimacy to the idea.
  • I read some bad dime novels by Judy LaMarsh that had this sort of plot. The world that we live in. 😞
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    I read some bad dime novels by Judy LaMarsh that had this sort of plot. The world that we live in. 😞

    I used to own a used copy of her autobiography, which I never got much into. Did she write fiction as well? I can't find anything about that on her wiki page.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    And...

    Are the tariffs in effect right now? Or are these still the ones that are supposed to start on March 1st?

    I saw where Trudeau has said our countermeasures will begin on March 12th. That strikes me as a long interval if Trump's tariffs are in effect right now, but I really don't know how these things work.
  • CaissaCaissa Shipmate
    The steel and aluminum tariffs start March 12.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    Caissa wrote: »
    The steel and aluminum tariffs start March 12.

    Ah. Thanks.
  • Judy LaMarsh's novels are referred to in her Canadian Encyclopedia entry-- I have seen them on second-hand bookstore shelves over the years but never picked up a copy.

    In the 1970s General Richard Rohmer wrote a series of alternative history potboilers about US invasions of Canada-- Ultimatum and Exxoneration. There was a third one, half of which I read at a cottage, about Canadian banks working with the Saudis to take over the US banking system. That one was a bit more realistic, but that perhaps reflects my empty life.
  • edited February 11
    My high school library had some of LaMarsh's potboilers. I tried to read one about a US takeover of Canada predicated on an energy crisis. Of course published in the late 1970's. It was all very dime-novelish and not very creative. Luckily Robertson Davies, Peterborough's famous local boy caught my fancy and was a much better novelist in every way.

    Paul Gross made an equally cringe-worthy TV movie about the US engineering an annexation of Canada in the early 2000's.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    I remember seeing Exxoneration on bookshelves in the early 1980s. It had the real vibe of that political era, post-Watergate/Oil Shock, with of an overlay of what I now recognize as Canadian nationalism.

    In the same vague cultural category, the Canadian evangelical-turned-skeptic Charles Templeton tried his hand with the late-1970s novel The Kidnapping Of The President. Never read it nor saw the subsequent movie(it was pre-empted when I tried to watch it on TV), but I don't think it had the Canadian nationalist angle.
  • stetson wrote: »
    I also think that Canada should hold a referendum on a simple question like "Do you want Canada to become part of the USA?" The results would be overwhelmingly negative, which probably wouldn't shut up Trump, but it would go some way toward stopping Democrats, centrists, mainstream media from giving any legitimacy to the idea.

    With the Brexit wounds still unhealed, the thought of a referendum give me shivers. There has to be a better way.

    In other news, the New Blue party has re-emerged around here for the Ontario election from what many had hoped to be oblivion.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    edited February 12
    stetson wrote: »
    I also think that Canada should hold a referendum on a simple question like "Do you want Canada to become part of the USA?" The results would be overwhelmingly negative, which probably wouldn't shut up Trump, but it would go some way toward stopping Democrats, centrists, mainstream media from giving any legitimacy to the idea.

    With the Brexit wounds still unhealed, the thought of a referendum give me shivers. There has to be a better way.

    Ehh, I think we'd be okay if it was held in the next few weeks or so under normal economic circumstances. Unlike anti-Europe in the UK, annexationism in Canda hasn't been a respectable part of the discussion for decades(*), even among economic continentalists.

    (Though I suppose if a 95% victory for "no" were predicted, but it turned out to be only 85%, someone might try and spin that as a crushing disappointment for the nationalists.)

    (*) I'd say the Newfoundland Referenda of 1948, and those aren't technically Canadian events.

    Corrected quoting code. BroJames, Purgatory Host
  • Never hold a referendum unless you know for sure what the result will be...

    Seriously, I think a referendum would give oxygen to a concept that right now is taken seriously only by maybe half-a-dozen people at in the White House.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    @Stercus Tauri
    With the Brexit wounds still unhealed, the thought of a referendum give me shivers. There has to be a better way.

    Ehh, I think we'd be okay if it was held in the next few weeks or so under normal economic circumstances. Unlike anti-Europe in the UK, annexationism in Canda hasn't been a respectable part of the discussion for decades(*), even among economic continentalists.

    (Though I suppose if a 95% victory for "no" were predicted, but it turned out to be only 85%, someone might try and spin that as a crushing disappointment for the nationalists.)

    (*) I'd say the Newfoundland Referenda of 1948, and those aren't technically Canadian events.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    Marsupial wrote: »
    Never hold a referendum unless you know for sure what the result will be...

    Seriously, I think a referendum would give oxygen to a concept that right now is taken seriously only by maybe half-a-dozen people at in the White House.

    Mileages vary. I personally don't worry so much about annexationism becoming a thing in Canada, but more about it becoming normalized in the USA. A resounding No in Canada might remove the "moderate" talking-point of "Well, maybe this is something the Canadians would really want".

    As a thought-experimrnt, I'm not even sure who would lead the Yes side in a near-future referendum. Conrad Black might seem like a plausible nominee, and has fairly strong connections with Trump, but even he isn't really the hottest commodity right now, and is basically just allowed to dodder about at his old newspaper by the new owners.
  • edited February 12
    Conrad Black disclaimed his Canadian citizenship so he could sit in the House of Lords, though he regained it last year.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    edited February 12
    Conrad Black disclaimed his Canadian citizenship so he could sit in the House of Lords, though he regained it last year.

    I always wondered if Barbara Amiel was a Canadian citizen, and if that's at least partly why he was allowed back, even before he had regained his citizenship.

    Appropriately for a man who so obviously patterned his persona on the Family Compact, Black moved further away spiritually from American-style republicanism when he took a place in the House Of Lords and adopted a title he would never be allowed to use in Canada.

    I used to know an old-style tory gentleman, who considered it a scandal that Chretien insisted on enforcing the Nickel Resolution against Black. Despite his suspicion of all things Yank, this same person thought that Trump did a good thing by refering to Black with full stylings when writing his pardon(*).

    (*) Which I'm pretty sure was actually written by Crossharbour himself.
  • Lady Black* is a natural-born citizen of the UK, and sometime in the 1960s, took Canadian citizenship. This would enable her to sponsor her husband under immigration regulations at the time, but there is a process for restoring citizenship to those who had disclaimed it.

    *One of my legal nerd friends, at the time of the peerage imbroglio, noted that while Conrad may not use his title as a Canadian, there was no reason why another Canadian citizen who acquired through marriage a courtesy title, might not use it. His conversation said that Mr Chrétien's substantial objection-- not that he needed one as titles are entirely a prerogative matter-- was that the life barony gave Conrad a seat in a foreign legislature. This tied into Canada's denial (until Paul Martin) of elections for Canadian seats in the French and Italian parliaments, which was how I knew this particular nerd, as I had to turn out a memo on this topic back at Ambiguity and Circumlocutions Canada.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    Just watched Doug Ford interviewed on MSNBC. A little...underwhelming.

    Overall, he seemed to be styling himself as the friendly neighbour next door, saddened and crestfallen by the sudden animosity of his old friend. "I spent 20 years of my life in Chicago and New Jersey, and I love America etc."

    Also, he engaged in injustified both-sidesism with "The whole world is laughing at Canada and the USA fighting." Not that I neccessarily want him to say "The whole world is laughing at your president for being a jingoistic idiot", but something more in that emotional tone would have been appropriate, I think.
  • CaissaCaissa Shipmate
    Are we sure this isn't the Beaverton? Oy veh! https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/green-party-emoji-branding-1.7461800
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    Amanda Zavitz quits as NDP candidate over previous remarks. (epiphanic)

    Okay. I am older than Ms. Zavitz, and don't have a PhD in sociology, let alone one focused on the study of inequality. But I would certainly have known not to get up in public and say something like that.
  • CaissaCaissa Shipmate
    Some academics are lacking in self-awareness; maybe even me included.
  • Caissa wrote: »
    Some academics are lacking in self-awareness; maybe even me included.

    Having dealt with academics in my former life (in a politically sensitive area-- Canadian history), I realized that they were frequently embroiled in heated discussions, often using definitive if unclear terminology, which would easily be misunderstood by anyone outside that setting. Honestly, they would have no clue.

    I was telephoned asking me about a former colleague of mine-- it emerged that a senior campaign official was compiling a list of backup candidates if, perchance, a nominee had to drop out of the race on short notice. I gave him what information I could, noting that while she would be an excellent candidate and a good MP, she had her own opinions and would stand by them-- if they wanted obedience over these qualities, they should look elsewhere. Chatting with political acquaintances in later years (a moving funeral two weeks ago gave me interesting stories), it seems that this often happens, and is getting to be routine. Candidates often (conveniently??) forget unhelpful parts of their past, assuming that social media is ephemeral. You'd think that this would be obvious by now, but...
  • CaissaCaissa Shipmate
    My academic background is any Canadian History with my MA being from Carleton.
  • I was informed that due to haste, this round of Ontario NDP vetting was not what it should have been and that this would happen. In the trade it is called a "Bozo Erruption"

    Candidate vetting is like visiting the dentist: nobody likes it but it's worse when you don't go.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    edited February 21
    In the trade it is called a "Bozo Erruption"

    A term popularized by Tom Flanagan and his protege Danielle Smith, who both went on to have their own separate problems with the entity, Smith in 2012, with her SoCon candidates musing on eternal damnation, and Flanagan a few months later when he ventured to make hyper-libertarian arguments in favour of legalizing certain types of(epiphanic) criminal activity, in front of an audience that was already out for blood.
  • I have a lot of sympathy for the concept of trying to protect a space within academia where people can float ideas in a way that won’t come back to haunt them years later in a more public context. That said when this sort of thing does happen it’s often because someone has said something rather stupid - or at least put it rather stupidly - as in the case here.
  • stetsonstetson Shipmate
    Marsupial wrote: »
    I have a lot of sympathy for the concept of trying to protect a space within academia where people can float ideas in a way that won’t come back to haunt them years later in a more public context. That said when this sort of thing does happen it’s often because someone has said something rather stupid - or at least put it rather stupidly - as in the case here.

    Well, Professor Zavitz is still protected within academia, since AFAIK she hasn't been dismissed from her position. But academic protection doesn't obligate any political party to allow you to run as a candidate under their banner.
  • Got my mail-in ballot in the mail yesterday for Ontario election. Best rate to send it (from Arizona) in time for voting day was $81 US via FedEx. The cost of participating in democracy.

    Perhaps investing in an on-line voting system would be a good one?
  • Got my mail-in ballot in the mail yesterday for Ontario election. Best rate to send it (from Arizona) in time for voting day was $81 US via FedEx. The cost of participating in democracy.

    Perhaps investing in an on-line voting system would be a good one?

    That postal charge looks excessive. Today I reeived a package of six books sent from Massachusetts to UK. Weight: 3.7 kilogrammes. Postage $72.89. Collected from supplier on Wednesday. Delivered in UK on Friday.
  • That postal charge looks excessive. ...

    UPS wanted $183. The USPS couldn't guarantee delivery in time for my ballot to count in the election.
Sign In or Register to comment.