I’m headed to New Zealand to be a sheep herder, so I feel you. 
They have plenty of those, and they work for dog tucker.
My biggest argument against it is I think notwithstanding type clauses are undemocratic. But so are many things in Canadian government: Parliaments not meeting during Covid or summers, omnibus bills with little debate or time for review, a first-past-the-post system happy with 35-40% of an ever-declining vote, a Senate in need of reform, general centralization of powers at every level. Efforts to deal with these things have often been unpopular or half-hearted.
However, Trudeau is unlikely to do much about it. He was silent about Quebec which has been even more muscular in support of laws I do not much like. The question is if Alberta does use it - will the federal government dare react?
How do they feel about the fact that the whole foundation of their “smarter and better” economy is crashing and burning on its way to extinction?
One gets the sense Canada has been, in general, so fantastically lucky that we no longer have a strong tradition of serious governance.
I fear that perhaps we’re falling into the same trap as the USA. There was an underlying assumption that both sides would play fair in accordance with certain traditions. Once one side realizes that there’s really no value in playing fair, and in fact, a tremendous advantage then the other side has no choice but to either concede (that’s bad) or play unfair too (that’s worse). Canada’s political system has more or less been chugging along relatively well with little gaming of the system. But over the past couple of decades there’s been an increasing amount of the use of loopholes in the system for political advantage. Both by Liberals and Conservatives (I’m not going to speculate which fired first because it is not that important). And this just ups the brinksmanship. If we’re smart, then we’ll adjust our system before it shatters as we’re seeing in the USA. But I’m not hopeful, so it is a sheep farm for me, my friends.
They feel that is just a bunch of liberal fake nonsense, and climate change was invented by Trudeau to steal money from them. Also, they hate Trudeau.
That’s actually, literally pretty accurate!
Incidentally, I saw a news story recently about the latest hot new Lamborghini, the elite redneck’s loud high-powered sports car. It was mentioned that it will be the last gasoline-powered car that Lamborghini will produce. Some of these guys in Alberta and Texas can’t see the writing on the wall even if you shoved their noses into it and read it to them out loud.
Where there hasn’t been the same trend is electoral advantage, which is, systemically, just not as easy to monkey around with. Gerrymandering isn’t a thing here, and really can’t be.
Similarly, no one in any major party is seriously saying after every election that there was mass cheating and calling up the My Pillow guy in front of a landscaping company’s loading dock to say there’s a giant election stealing conspiracy, and that is rather exceedingly unlikely to happen.
But nonetheless, we do have governments that just seem to have no interest at all in dealing with anything significant. It’s always been the case that some things got short shrift, but now basically everything does. There was some degree of serious effort regarding COVID, in part because they were just totally forced to deal with it… and the instant they felt they didn’t have to they stopped. There is no interest at all in, say, setting up something to be prepared for the next one.
The federal government has no interest at all, none whatsoever, in being prepared for dealing with foreign adversaries. My provincial government is responsible for a teetering health care system that they have no real plans to improve. I am honestly unaware of either government having any really impressive, visionary plan for ANYTHING. These are two different parties, BTW; it doesn’t matter. Neither is serious. Both are openly contemptuous of consultation and traditions of parliamentary democracy. It’s all short sound bites for their bases.
I can’t disagree with any of this. Sadly.
This has definitely to some degree been the saving grace. It has been in governance where we’ve seen increasing use of loopholes. Omnibus bills with short debate is a good example. Our first was 1968 under PET. The next (I think) was under Harper in 2015. Since then, there have been at least two more in 2018 and 2019. It is like the PM has realized “Hmmm… this is way easier than doing things the normal way. We should just do this more often.” So the tradition of irregular use of Omnibus seems to have been set aside. And it is this slow erosion that concerns me. We cannot count on tradition. We need things put into black and white.
Is that Ontario? Because not only do they have no plans to improve, they actually have a plan to make things worse.
At a time when it’s essentially impossible to find a new doctor if you need one, existing doctors are booked weeks or months in advance, and ERs all over the province are facing stupidly long wait times, and sometimes just closing up shop for a day or two because they lack the staff, why go out of your way to limit access to the one part of the system that seems to be working, and can relieve pressure on all the other parts?
The Canadian system has the advantage of an independent Elections Commission and relatively little gerrymandering. People trust the results and it is so far unthinkable for them to be openly challenged here by any party. Popular parties are more similar than different.
All parties talk reform until they win enough seats to do something about it. Then the talk stops. The talk of giving MPs real power and independence with less autocracy. Widely discussing and debating ideas and giving people the chance to research and read them. Passing individual things instead of a giant omnibus bill that arrives as a giant lump to take or leave. Having an effective Senate, possibly elected.
The Liberals just flatly promising no more FPTP and then saying “Nah” was about as cynical as it has ever gotten, but I have “faith” the Conservatives can top that (likely on a different file; they have no current objection to FPTP.) It’s the Cynicism Games!
Some sobering stuff. There really is very little leadership at a time when we really need it both globally and domestically. Just a lot of populist maneuvering.
Along with the independent Elections Commission, we also have decent limitations on campaign finance. I seem to remember some actions by the Trudeau government to amend that, but I can’t seem to find anything with a quick search. Either way our electoral system seems to be a lot more distanced from influence than the mess that is US democracy currently. I don’t know how much that can protect us from the populist and anti reality political forces that appear to at least partly be do to social media.
I think a lot of you misunderstand the Alberta exceptionalism thing, its not all about oil. Oil revenues have only validated it. There is a tradition of what is self represented as down to earth rural pragmatism and work ethic, that is really based on tribalism, cultural ignorance, and quite frankly, selfishness. Add to that a growing force of fundamentalist Christians strongly (or completely) influenced by American fundamentalist libertarian mythology. A lot of the support for Daniel Smith comes from young earth creationist, anti science nutbaggery.
One could contrast Saskatchewan’s declaration which essentially just confirms rights the province already has. Disavowing federal law when desired sounds better to the disaffected than it actually is.
I wouldn’t make anything of that contrast. Scott Moe has never seen any nutbaggery from Albertan conservatives that he doesn’t want to emulate.
Maybe, but Saskatchewan’s declaration would likely withstand judicial scrutiny and I am unsure that Alberta’s would.
Two questions.
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This board has better informed me about stringent gun laws in Canada and convinced me many of the expensive government attempts at registering guns would not make much difference to crime rates in part because penalties are already harsh and guns are apparently easily imported. Does anyone believe the new government attempt to restrict more guns will be more effective, or has other merits, or is it more about appearances?
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What do people think about “strong mayors” and other attempts to build more housing? Will they work, or weaken democracy without quite doing enough? How should development be combined with having reasonable infrastructure?
Look, I’m as cynical as the next guy. And I’m quite sure that any party that wins under FPTP is suddenly going to find that maybe electoral reform isn’t such a great idea. Also, Trudeau never ever should have said this will be last election under FPTP. However, it wasn’t so much a “nyah” as they formed the committee, the committee did a cursory investigation and concluded that there wasn’t overwhelming support for reform, and no real consensus what reform should look like among Canadians. They felt this could harm the legitimacy of elections (among other problems). Was Trudeau happy with this result? Yeah, I think so because I don’t think he wanted to roll the dice and end up with a fair system that would harm him and the Liberals (told ya I was a cynical as the next guy) but it wasn’t quite a “Neener neener, we just aren’t going to try at all.”