Rule existed before the election, the party has 1.6% of the vote. They can do the work the Green party did to get on these debates. Until then can huff and puff all they like but I don’t want them there.
I think it useful to note that Confederation itself was largely an effort to create a state that would act in the interests of industrial corporations and banks: securing the land they needed for the railway, creating tariffs to render them immune from competition, using taxes to fund industrial projects and guarantee profits, securing and guaranteeing loans from international finance, and removing First Nations and Métis from the land so the land could be “given” to corporations then sold to settlers at a profit. So the government wasn’t even “captured” by a special interest: it was created by a special interest to help it further its own interests. Attempts to broaden the scope of the state to help the rest of the population need to be seen in that context.
Yeah, there’s at least a couple in CPoC campaign management that have at least loose ties to the Proud Boys (via Ezra Lavant).
Right but there’s the platform and then there’s the wink wink nudge nudge platform. The CPoC platform is ok, and I agree pretty mainstream. But why don’t they want to release how many of their candidates are vaccinated? While, O’Toole has said in an interview he repudiates the violence, he has not taken that to social media. Why is O’Toole flip flopping on several issues? What is the real platform?
Secret nefarious conservative platforms is a reliable Liberal FUD approach I’ll grant you that. Isn’t a little played out though?
Not really so long as Conservative leaders continue to be unclear on what they actually support. O’Toole keeps saying things that are contrary to his platform. So what is his platform? Is it what they’ve published or what he said first or said most recently? This has been a problem since the merger of PC and Reform. The further right and social conservative aspects of the CPoC are not palatable to most Canadians, so they downplay because they know if they acknowledge them then they lose.
And they know that if they fully repudiate them, then they lose. So they play both sides against the middle.
Is it any wonder the voter can’t tell if they should believe O’Toole’s words on the campaign trail or the written campaign platform?
Which is different from the Liberal approach? I’d imagine I could do an ethics or electoral reform or climate actions say/do comparison on the Liberals without too much work. The Liberal approach tends to be more along the lines of playing to the soft NDPers.
Anyway, I had one of my local candidate come by yesterday. Nice enough, but all the talking points were local which is nice but they couldn’t really address my broader concerns and the federal government is the least useful level to address, say, light rail in my area. A lot of this election feels local issue driven so maybe that’s it.
I think the recent Liberal approach is to promise electoral reform and then forget to do it once elected.
I think Grey is right to say that the Liberal approach–deke one way, go the other way–is about the same as the Conservative approach, though the actual deke may look a little different, depending on where the observer sits. That all three parties are closer than they pretend is also true; elections are in large part about deciding which particular slice of the elite will form the government and who outside the government will have better access to it. Frankly, I’m kinda done with the nation-state!
I love The Beaverton. They crack me up. There was another good one say “Trudeau forces Edmonton Oilers to change their name to Edmonton Wind Turbines.”
If we’re doing satires now, this is a good one:
Not saying I want them there. I am saying this decision should be made by voters and not bureaucrats, and in these parts they are polling at 5% and above the Greens.
I see marginal differences between the three main parties. The Green Party would have been better served sticking to environmental issues. The PPC has not run a positive campaign, to say the least.
FWIW, the PPC had a tent at the anti-vaccine “passport” rally today in Vancouver. Their commitment to freedom included blocking people trying to get to hospital and cancer treatment centre.
In my neck of the woods they are polling at under 5% and below the Greens.
They are not so much a political party, as simply a collection of assholes. (what is a group of assholes called? A blossom? A set? Perhaps “a senate of assholes” would work. Or maybe redundant.
And now this: apparently O’Toole’s policy director was registered as Uber’s corporate lobbyist until a week ago. That’s a little different from hiring Mother Jones as your policy director
It’s a ring of assholes.
Maxime Bernier refuses to vaccinate. He shouldn’t be anywhere near the other candidates while speaking on a debate stage. That’s not the reason they’re keeping him off the stage, but I think that would be a valid reason.
There has to be some rule to determine who can participate in the debates. Canada has a lot of political parties. Do we really want the Rhino Party and the Marxist-Leninist Party showing up? They’re not important enough (as they’re not popular enough) to deserve a spot.
Is the Rhino party (take 2) doing anything this time? Previously, they campaigned on the promise that if elected they would keep nine of their promises. Clearly everyone else has stolen this plank of the Rhino’s platform.
I note parenthetically that the Communist Party of Canada, or CPC, is the second oldest party in Canada