Can’t blame Ford. He’s hiding in that cave as well as anyone could hope for. 
And just hanging around waiting for a streetcar, is Peter MacKay. Politics? Oh no, he’s done with politics. Interesting to watch the campaign, though, and speculate. Never know what might happen. A week is a long time on politics. Just a spectator.
You seem focused on people hating a particular candidate. Why is that? Are you suggesting that we can’t make a rational decision on who to vote for? Could it be the rational decision is not to like him?
There are many good reasons to not like Trudeau’s in the west. The father stole our resources, and the son wants to prevent us from exploiting them in the short remaining time that we can. What’s to like?
The majority of Canadians are concerned about climate change and scaling down carbon fuels is just the way things are going to go. I mean, you might as well vote Conservative but Trudeau really is treading as close to the middle as he can. He gets no thanks for buying the pipeline project. He gets “whatever, call me when it’s built” and murmuring that he was probably paying off some friends with that deal. You think things will go better when it’s a Liberal minority buttressed by the NDP?
All I’m doing is pointing out that passionate hatred of someone is not a solid basis for forming a government. And the hatred we see from Alberta is so over the top, it is simply seen by the rest of the country as … silly at best.
I mean, some people even look at policy from Trudeau Senior to create a national energy program in the wake of a recession and oil shocks of the 1970’s and turn that into a silly rant about “HE STOLE OUR RESOURCES!!!11”
I mean, can you imagine? Sounds a bit over the top, I know.
And why do you think it is? Or is it just easier to call them ‘silly’?
Figures of between 50 and 100 billion lost from Alberta due to the national energy program. National Energy Program - Wikipedia
Not sure how ‘stole’ is considered over the top. Maybe from the point of view of the thief it is objectionable.
The problem Alberta has then is getting anyone under 40 in the rest of the country to remember the NEP and it’s impacts. Consider there were 25 million people in Canada in 1985 when the program was wound down and of those 2.3 million lived in Alberta. Since then Alberta has grown by 2 million while the rest of the country has grown by 10 million.
It’s not that badly considered government policy can’t be bad (look at how Alberta’s governments have managed to flat line the Heritage fund) it’s that personalizing bad policy from 40 years ago is a poor approach to reviewing current party platforms.
I mean, the very people who have humiliations in t heir past are the ones who are least motivated to tell the truth. Justin Trudeau didn’t tell anyone about this shit, and he had to know, if he was honest with himself, that it was on camera and could come out.
Many older Albertans I know seem to thing that in the 1980’s, Alberta was a sovereign nation, and Trudeau the elder sent troops in.
What actually happened was that there was an energy crisis, and the federal government of the day instituted a federal energy policy. Now you may not have liked that policy, because it was done for the benefit of the country as a whole, rather than your own, smaller, provincial interests. Was it good policy? Bad policy? Probably some of both.
Fast forward 40 years. You’re still bleating about it. Nobody else cares. It happened. Get over it. “Silly” is the best spin the rest of the country puts on your obsession.
Yes, and all the “Think of your fellow Canadians!” Albertans love to ignore the historical context in which this plan arose.
Alberta basically got pissed off because they weren’t allowed to screw over the rest of Canada by unilaterally jacking up the price of oil.
You can’t discount what it did - it seriously screwed over a number of people in Alberta. The problem would seem to be that it’s become, not exactly a founding myth, but what seems to be a core piece of identity. Albertan’s don’t vote for a Trudeau or a Liberal party.
Yes, I was in Alberta at the time (working in the oil patch), and certainly remember how pissed people were. They were being asked to make personal sacrifices for the benefit of the country as a whole, and nobody really likes to be made to do that.
But in the 40 years since, successive provincial conservative governments have done a fine, fine job of screwing the province over, and letting corporations run the show while pissing away the Heritage fund. This seems to have been OK though.
Canadians seem to have taken a shine to Singh. Don’t know if it will translate to large votes (Blanchet and May similarly poll high), but it’ll give Trudeau a reason to start focusing on his left flank.
I read somewhere that there’s speculation Scheer will be out as party leader if (when) he loses. On my tablet, but I’ll see if I can find it again later.
I would be more surprised if there wasn’t someone speculating that.
Not sure if you understand how oil is sold if you think Alberta can jack up the price at their discretion. Wanting to sell your product at the world price isn’t screwing anyone other than the person being told they can’t do it. Which is essentially what is happening today. Different scenario, same results, same Trudeau watching Albertan lose jobs while willing to break the law to keep 1/20th the jobs in other parts of the country.
But hey, when oil is no longer viable, we can look forward to the rest of the country helping out in turn!:):):dubious::smack:
The Conservatives came out with their budget costings today. While it is vague and has some problems, I prefer it to the alternatives I have seen. I like the local Liberal. I am not crazy about using debt to GDP ratio as a measure though, since provinces and municipalities have been running big debts, partly since services are constantly being downloaded to smaller levels of government.
A couple of links as promised.
I wasn’t impressed at all. His plan for paying for it is a flight of fantasy. Going after tax evaders is not a real plan. You cannot reasonably predict how much revenue will be raised, and isn’t like every government tries to minimize tax evasion. I think it’ll be like trying to squeeze blood from a stone. And keep in mind, this isn’t some small part of his overall plan. It was over 10% of how he expects to pay for his plan. Madness.
He also wants to find reduce “government operating expenses”. I.e. “efficiencies” Gee, where have I heard that before?
And then reductions in infrastructure spending by pushing it out. I cannot disagree with this more. We cannot keep pushing off infrastructure spending. That was a big thing I disapproved of from the Harper gov’t. And it was one of the areas where Trudeau inherited an issue from Harper. We cannot continue to let our infrastructure crumble. It isn’t exciting spending, but it needs to be done.
I fully expect that if Scheer became prime minister he would either not be able to balance the books, or he’d have to make some deep cuts.
And look, that’s fine, in a sense. As I said above, I only really expect 67% of a campaign platform to actually happen.
My biggest concern with Scheer remains climate change inaction. His plan for climate change is simply awful, and we absolutely 100% have to take action. The whole world needs to take action, and we can gain some soft diplomacy by doing our part.
I didn’t say it was a great budget. I agree tax savings are approximate and support infrastructure spending while interest rates remain low. And I agree finding efficiencies is a wellworn road. Some of the Conservatives other policies are far from my ideal, and I think the Conservatives would be much better off with better climate control plans. But at least they acknowledge the climate as a concern, which the PPC barely do.
But it is also far from given that taxes will be extracted from FAANGS. And the Infrastructure Bank has not exactly led to an explosion of infrastructure. In particular, transit connecting big cities to smaller ones, and to small towns, could be much better. I like the Liberals. I liked them more when they talked about balanced budgets even as a long term goal. Although I acknowledge spending can help delay recessions, there is something to be said for keeping spending under control during better times. Using a new benchmark for responsible spending has some problems.