Succinctly and briefly, could someone please explain to me what the issue is with the GG?
I apparently have not been in the loop.
Ta.
According to several news reports, she has drastically cut back on public events, and has announced an unspecified review of the number of charities and non-profits that the GG traditionally supports. For instance, normally the Gov Gen awards to long-serving community volunteers at a public ceremony in their home town; chance to honour their service, photo op for the recipient and kids and grandkids with the Queen’s representative, and so on.
Rumor is that she’s too busy to do that for some reason, and the volunteer medals are being delivered via Canada Post.
Another major duty for the Gov Gen is to grant Royal Assent to bills. Apparently she kicked mightily when told that the ceremony for Royal Assent to the Cannabis Act was being delayed by a few days, thereby cutting into her summer vacation plans. The fact that this was a centerpiece of the Liberal platform and they wanted a showy Assent ceremony didn’t seem to penetrate. The GovGen’s job is to do ceremonies and grant assent.
One other example: traditionally the GovGen tours disaster areas, as a show of public support for those who’s lives have been upended.
She toured locally in Ottawa after the recent storm.
Humboldt is still waiting.
Congratulations to Andrew Scheer on his landslide 2019 election win.
I’ll take that action. the Liberals are exceedingly likely to win.
EVERY new government in Canada has been re-elected. Literally every single new government ever handed a majority in Canadian history has won again, unless the other party kept the same leader. As Stephen Harper is gone, my money’s on Trudeau.
No government in the history of Canada has ever sold.out the most politically important industry in both Quebec and Ontario. How Trudeau can possibly justify ending free trade in autos in exchange for literally fucking nothing is beyond me
Pfff! He’s got nice hair. People losing jobs has no relevance.
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Canada did very well, and did not sell out the auto industry. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/usmca-nafta-what-we-know-1.4845103
A bit more detail Revamped NAFTA deal, renamed USMCA, will 'rebalance' North America trade after Canada reaches 11th hour agreement | Financial Post
The deal gives Canada nothing that it doesn’t already have, and we’ve given up massive concessions. By caving, rather than ensuring trade peace in our time, we’ve only encouraged the US to come back to this well whenever their leader need a boost in the polls.
We are never going to be in a better position to stand up for ourselves than we are right now.
It’s true that Canada has given up some points and got nothing in return, and there’s nothing stopping the U.S. from doing this again in the future (although the sunset clause is not there, thankfully). I doubt that any other party in Ottawa would have done better, though.
And given that all Québec parties have spoken in favour of the milk quota system, and the cultural exception has apparently been preserved, I don’t see this having much effect on today’s election in Québec.
I agree that it’s unlikely that another party could have negotiated a better deal, because Trump wasn’t interested in a good deal. Hell, Harper’s on record as saying he would have immediately capitulated to all of Trump’s demands if he had been reelected. However, in these circumstances the only possible strategy was to run out the clock on Trump and take the short-term economic pain. Trump is deeply unpopular, his own party is uncomfortable with his anti-trade stance, and his threat to place tariffs on autos would have imposed a ruinous cost on the Big Three automakers. It is not politically possible for Trump to make that stick in the medium term. The automakers and the auto unions own way too much power in Congress. I don’t argue that Trump wasn’t probably deranged enough to try, but it wouldn’t have worked.
The next time we have to deal with NAFTA/USMCA being reopened, we are unlikely to see such a confluence of factors in our favour. If we had stood firm and proven that the political cost in trying to mess with NAFTA was too high, the risk and uncertainty around would have been dead for good. Now Canada is going to have to deal with free trade being in question indefinitely, which is the worst possible outcome.
Interesting article in the Guardian about today’s Quebec election:
Where you get the idea that he sold out free trade in cars is beyond me. I think you guys are a little behind the news.
The changes to auto free trade are quite minor. If anything, the requirement pushing Mexican wages up a little higher will, in the short term, superficially make Canadian auto production appear better.
There isn’t one single “massive concession.” Not one.
This is, basically, just NAFTA with fairly minor tweaks. It will leave 99 percent of all cross border trade pretty much the same.
Canada’s auto exports are now subject to a quota. That’s not free trade. Details are sketchy, but right now there are no indications that the quota will ever increase, adjust for inflation. or expire. It’s a slow death for the auto industry in Canada.
That idiots main problem is that he failed to comprehend the fact that we were never going to get a good deal. This negotiation was Trump realigning the agreement so that it favored the US more. We should have gone in with a save what you can position and do what Harper was suggesting. A the end of the day, we did not do too badly. Mexico’s wage parity was a huge win for Canada that Trudeau had nothing to do with and everything else that he “gave a way” was within a few points of what we were prepared to give up for the TPP.
The only choice he really had was to walk away and watch thousands in Ontario get laid off next week alone, when the auto tarriffs would have kicked in , or bend the knee. This would have happened no matter who the prime minister was. The magic numbers are 80 and 20, we export 80 percent and the Americans export 20 percent back. We need them, they do not need us so at the end of the day we should have put up a token negotiation just to keep them honest and did the photo op.
Trudeau lost politically, but that’s about it. I am not voting liberal, but it would have had nothing to do with this issue. Myself, I think Freeland is toast, wearing that Tee shirt makes me wonder what her memoirs are going to be like.
The quota doesn’t apply to most cars at all, doesn’t apply to parts, and is set** forty percent above current total production**. If we’re ever making so many cars that the quota were to kick in, we’d need to switch production over to shovels to clear away all the money. It is simply not possible in any realistic outlook for the quota to ever actually be applied. You need to read up on the details. The auto industry is absolutely delighted. Canadian auto parts manufacturer stocks are climbing already - like, 5-10 percent gains literally just today.
The auto industry will not be affected at all as compared to NAFTA.
With regards to the trade deal and its new name, I did get a kick out of what one of the commenters to the Globe and Mail called the USMCA: the United States Marine Corps Association. But that got me wondering if it should be called some other combination of letters, to avoid confusion with the Marines.
First Quebec government in over 50 years that is neither Liberal nor PQ.
And the PQ likely won’t have party status in the Assembly, with their leader defeated in his own seat, for the second time in two elections.
The times they have changed.
I’m not happy with the election results. Not happy that the CAQ got elected. I’m fine with the results in my own riding, though I’m not sure how that’ll affect life in my riding.
And yeah, you can pronounce CAQ as “kack” if you like. A lot of people do, in English and French.
Yeah, the main positive point with the election is “it probably won’t be as bad as Ford or Trump”.
During the campaign, all parties except the PLQ (Liberals) claimed to support electoral reform (some sort of proportional representation with regional lists). Now that they’ve won a majority using the old system, expect the CAQ to backpedal on this just like the federal Liberals did. Probably faster.