It is pretty funny. Look, for me, even the hypocrisy isn’t that big a deal compared to policy. I know that every politician is an imperfect human. And I know that politicians lie. And they lie a LOT. I don’t like that they lie a lot, but we all know they do. They say what they need to say to get into power. That’s why I try to ignore these controversies and focus on policy, and assume I’ll get about 67% of what they promise. But character does still matter a bit. The Trudeau blackface confirmed what we already knew about him. He’s a privileged little sh!t. What makes this in some ways worse for Scheer is that he’s made character the cornerstone of his campaign. If you’re going to do that, then you better be sure your character is squeaky clean. And it isn’t.
Scheer’s insurance lie is small potatoes (well, mid-sized, since he claimed he was almost done). But the citizenship thing is hypocrisy. I don’t care if he’s a dual-citizen. I do care that he criticized other political figures for the exact same thing.
Unfortunately, the green movement relies on emotions as well as facts, with the former often outweighing the latter. They would never go for new nuclear power plants.
I agree his dual citizenship is an irrelevance. The fact he hasn’t mentioned it before is also irrelevant. His hypocrisy is not, and if he’s a hypocrite, that, as Kimera points out, rather quickly closes up one of the only advantages he had over Trudeau.
I would further add that while I find a guy having a citizenship his parents got him as a child that he’s never acted on to be completely uninteresting, it is plainly, stupidly obvious that it WOULD end up being an issue. It may be ridiculous and unfair that it’s an issue, but it inevitably was going to be. Scheer was mind-bogglingly stupid to not air this out a long time ago.
There’s a lot of mind-bogglingly stupid going around.
Watched the Singh Face to Face - Moderator was fairly level I thought. Seemed a broader group of of voters that were more confrontational of Singh than others. One in particular was basically a NDP member arguing about his leadership within the NDP itself. Liked the ex-oil patch guy but was a little disappointed with Singh’s reply. Finally some Bill 21 questions but like other parties the reply seems awfully tepid. Did like the questions around how the NDP would reply to foreign challenges.
Interesting viewing.
I have it recorded but I didn’t get a chance to watch it yet. Probably tonight or over the weekend.
Well, of course there is. It’s an election. Worse, it’s a fairly low-stakes election.
As a US Citizen Scheer has registered for the US Draft.
So many novel questions arising out of Mapleface.
- Did Scheer vote for Hillary, Trump or does he actually support voter apathy? Did he ever contribute donations to American political parties?
- I understand that as a Canadian political leader he shouldn’t comment on American politics - but speaking as an American taxpayer - does he support President Trump?
- If the US invaded Canada (hey, it been known to happen) - could a Prime Minister Scheer be drafted to fight against Canada?
The campaign specifically mentioned that he’s never voted in a American election. I doubt he’s paid any American taxes either, even though the campaign also specifically said he filed every year.
Since we’ve reached the ridiculous portion of this thread I’ll just nit pick that the US invaded the British colonies of Upper and Lower Canada and not the Dominion of Canada.
God this can’t end soon enough.
I agree with all of that. The fact that Scheer was able – with a straight face – to criticize Michaëlle Jean for her dual citizenship is a revealing insight into the workings of his mind, and it’s not a very reassuring one (his party also criticized Stephane Dion and others for the same thing). It is, in fact, an insight that fits perfectly with his misrepresentations about his “insurance” background: the guy is simply not trustworthy.
Doesn’t any party do a background check of their candidates at least at the stage of them running for the party leadership? How hard is it to hire a private investigation firm and vet the candidates? Out of 37M people in Canada this is the best our political parties can do?
I don’t personally care if a politician has double citizenship as long as their loyalty is to Canada. But it seems like something that the party should know about their candidate.
To run for high office takes a degree of money and megalomania. A candidate does not need to have lived a perfect and boring life. I’d settle for great policy. I’ve not seen this from any party.
Personally, I actually think we’ve had a pretty good last four years and I so like this Justin…
Judging from news today out of Burnaby - I don’t think the Conservative party has considered the importance of vetting. A minimal amount of checking would have dragged up dirt on this former candidate.
Per 338’s projection this riding is a toss-up against the Liberals. I believe it is too late to set up a new candidate so they might be conceding a western seat with this announcement.
The Conservatives had problems like this in 2015 too. One of their MPs had worked as a plumber (or a similar job), and worked on a sink while the house owner was away. He needed to take a leak, and decided to do that in the sink! He wasn’t the only candidate caught doing something moronic, of course. Many candidates were caught saying stupid or prejudiced things on social media. The Conservatives call this “bimbo eruptions”.
All parties have their share of morons, but this election we have the leaders of the two largest parties not cooperating with their vetting. (Trudeau was too embarrassed to admit to the brownface beforehand, which meant he had kept that hidden for several elections. Scheer has been caught on two issues so far.)
I heard a joke (which might not be a joke) that in the future, the only successful politicians will be people who never used social media, except, I guess, Linkedin. Apparently people simply cannot stop posting stupid stuff on social media.
So at this point I can’t reward the allowed ethical lapses by the Liberals with a vote. I can’t reward the Conservatives with a vote since they’ve opted to continue to ignore climate change, revert to spending as much as the Liberals and appear far to attached to the less savoury parts of their base. Which leaves protest votes but the NDP has no sense of the need for a strong federal centre in a big federation like ours, would seems to be weak on foreign policy and overall budgeting. The Greens have some of the same problems as well as being unable to explicitly state how to achieve their key targets that are in excess of the current one we’re not meeting.
I forget, do spoiled ballots get counted by Elections Canada?
You do have the option of voting for your individual candidates instead of the party. Learn a bit about the people who will actually be representing you, and choose the one you think will do the best job. Their views don’t always line up perfectly with their party’s, and electing candidates whose views differ somewhat from their party’s mainstream is how you shift party platforms.
After years of this, I just have to conclude that no. They don’t do this.
The thing is, who’s going to do it? Andrew Scheer (or any other leader) wasn’t hired like an employee; there wasn’t a recruiting manager in HR doing background checks. He was voted for by the members. Prior to that, who’s supposed to vet him?
The riding association or higher up in the party organization. Why wouldn’t they? Unlike in the states, the party can control who runs under their banner. The problem is that candidates don’t always cooperate and there’s only so invasive you can go.
Watching the English debates and of the the love of fucking god shoot me now.