I’m going to steal this.
It is something that needs to be said more. Don’t get complacent but remember how much better things are now than ever before.
I am also stealing. Tonight, I will explain that amongst the Dopers, we have our own lights, and this came from a pretty wise one.
Thank you for the perspective. I needed it today.
The Islamic person who was arrested has been cleared by the police who note that he is a witness to the slaughter, not a suspect.
The French-Canadian who called the police on himself and surrendered, Alexandre Bissonnette, is an internet troll who is anti-women and anti-Muslim, a fan of the leader of France’s far right populist anti-immigration party Front National, and a supporter of the populist separatist Parti Quebecois which itself has a history of anti-Muslim members.
That puts it down to a populist stochastic terrorist.
https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=Bienvenue%20aux%20réfugiés%20quebec%20bissonnette
It’s no coincidence that that the populist murderer of Muslims at prayer would have been enervated by populist Trump’s attack against Muslims the previous day.
I should not have been using the term populist. I believe nationalist would be a more appropriate term. By historical analogy, the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei was a populist party, but its defining characteristic was nationalism carrie to extreme.
Both Trump and Saunders are populists, but only Trump is a nationalist, bringing with him the bigoted evils that often accompany nationalism.
Coyne has a wonderfully snark filled column in the Post today.[
](Breaking News, Headlines and Stories | National Post | National Post)Basically the Grits had no intention for electoral reform; after desperately trying to sabotage all honest attempts at carrying it through, they’re happy to kill it and place all blame on the public instead of their own lack of leadership and sense of nation building.
I’m a bit more cynical then Coyne, and I’d say that they are also taking full advantage of the recent events/slaughter in Quebec to use this moment to pull off the electoral reform band-aid. That’s why they are quietly announcing this now.
One of my co-workers is originally from Africa and he said that he doesn’t understand why someone would go out and kill a bunch of Muslims and nobody does that kind of thing in Africa. When I pointed out that his home country had a civil war that involved the Muslim region fighting the Christian region, he clarified that killing Muslims for a reason is perfectly sensible but killing Muslims for no reason is weird. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
This is about as much of a surprise as the sun rising in the East. I have said it before and will again; anyone who thought Trudeau and gang were sincere about this is a huge sucker.
And yes. Trudeau is using the massacre to try to minimize the fallout. Why else announce it now?
^ Agreed.
Plus, I never wanted electoral reform anyway. I’m fine with first past the post.
Incidentally, just to be sure, I did a search; my first statement on the matter on the SDMB was on October 21, 2015:
Whether it was the first promise broken or not is obviously questionable - we don’t know when Trudeau torpedoed it, though I am confident it was a long, long time before this week - but it was broken, as of course it was inevitably going to be.
They were more clever about it than the Conservatives would have been, too. Not SUPER clever, but the Tories would have just said “Nah” and told anyone who objected to shut up and then bitched when they were criticized for it that no one was being fair to them. The Liberals did several songs and dances.
Quite frankly all serious desire for it died when the Grits won their majority. I mean, who needs stronger legitimacy and increased public confidence in our national/shared democratic system of governance when “our guys” received 8.6% more votes than the “other guys”! We rule (and thus will always rule) due to this system! Woohoo!!1!
Trudeau is clearly not the farsighted nation builder that his father was; he’s just a flash-in-the-pan savoir of the Liberal brand. I hope whenever he loses his majority (and sooner or later it’ll happen) he can be satisfied with that meagre legacy.
7.6% more votes then the other guys. Jeez, my math needs work.
It was really nothing more than the usual discovery, once in power, that changing a system than no one minds too much requires a lot of political capital and effort. The Liberals would rather get their carbon pricing system into place and work on reducing interprovincial trade barriers. Oh and now deal with the man child down south.
I still like my idea of using by-elections as small scale test runs of some of the more feasible voting systems. The scale is small enough that the House’s power structure wouldn’t change much. Even if, for example, my MP wouldn’t have won via first past the post but did through a test election I’d be fine. Honestly I’d trust almost any party’s candidate to do a decent job.
You will understand if I find it exceptionally hard to believe that they, or anyone whose brain is receiving oxygen, did not know this prior to October 19, 2015.
I think of election reform as a nice to have, but am not bothered if the current government wants to place their priorities on more urgent matters, especially given the lack of public consensus on the issue.
People I know are middling indifferent to reform, but beyond pissed their tax dollars were spent on such an asinine survey that failed, in design, to accurately measure anything.
Wasteful government spending could not be more clearly represented, I think.
Kevin O’Leary needs to be stopped in his attempt to rule Canada.
He refused to participate in the Quebec debate, and now, while a mass funeral is being held for Muslim victims of a nationalist shooter, he has released a vid of him happily shooting off an automatic weapon.
He’s just visiting. 
Okay, why is our defence minister Harjit Sanjjan, holding his hand over his heart during the playing of the US National Anthem?
He’s Canadian. We don’t hold our hands over our hearts during the playing of any national anthem, much less ours. Nor do we have any laws requiring such.
Why did Mr. Sajjan do what he did?