Another one bites the dust
Edit: changed video to CBC. In this video, according to Robert Fife of the Globe & Mail he was strong armed and treated badly by the party (there was rumours he would flip and he needed to put out a report denying it yesterday).
Crossing the floor is a very difficult decision with huge political risks, or, as Sir Humphrey might have said to his Minister in the British political sitcom Yes, Minister, a “courageous decision”! Meaning, it will cost you the next election. Jeneroux is apparently one step ahead of that. He can’t stand Poliviere either, but instead of crossing the floor is getting the hell out altogether.
Fife thinks there will be ANOTHER defection “for sure”. PP really isn’t a good guy to work with eh?
People have to get over using PP as a metric for Carney. The election is over. And many of Carney’s policies sounded a lot like PP.
What do Dopers think of Carney’s budget? I think Trump and the military are obvious challenges but that overall it was milquetoast. Still, I did not initially realize graduate students were not included in the immigration caps. This, along with funding for the best researchers to come to Canada, at least treat universities and education more seriously.
Honestly, its hard to measure the budget when all this circus is happening. The Conservatives are imploding under PP and the Liberals are having cake.
Either way, I should focus on the budget… but wow.
Why is the circus happening? Especially right now? Could have crossed the aisle when PP lost his riding, could have done it when he was elected again, but does it when the second highest budget ever was introduced while weeks before they were touting PP and the conservative policies? Even the most blind partisan has to have some questions about the timing.
The goal was met. Distract.
The budget has the Liberals shaking PP’s tree, and he’s getting a few ripe and shiny Red Tory apples. We all know the game, and we all know the reasons why. This is a confidence vote and the first test of Carney’s acumen as a technocrat turned politician. Can he sink the opposition or will he be sunk by them?
Could have crossed the aisle when PP lost his riding, could have done it when he was elected again, but does it when the second highest budget ever was introduced while weeks before they were touting PP and the conservative policies? Even the most blind partisan has to have some questions about the timing.
The goal was met. Distract.
It’d be the definition of a pessimist to leave earlier (at election day, or PP’s re-entry into the house), but however you slice it the choices of the MPs’ are votes against the confidence of PP’s Conservative party. Either Carney’s Liberals provided a better home (for d’Entremont), or in Jeneroux’s case the Conservatives are too toxic for him to stay and keep sane.
Now the question should be, like in ANY honest reflection it REALLY should be, if the Conservatives should re-evaluate PP’s leadership. PP has shown no sign of changes. He REALLY is who he presents himself to be; quite honestly.
I don’t vote Liberal and I never have (I vote NDP but right now my riding has a Conservative MP) so let’s unpack this a little more. I accept at face value that this particular budget sucks. Not only in general but also in specific for me as a university student. Carney is cutting foreign students again. This means that my university (along with all the others), which is already deeply in debt because of the previous cuts to foreign students, will have to figure out how to make due with even less revenue. And to this point, the government’s response has basically been “too bad, you shouldn’t have relied on that golden goose.” (Aside: Alberta should take note of how quickly the federal government will say this to them when the last oil well dries up so I hope to hell they invest wisely because they will not be bailed out no matter how much they have contributed to the rest of Canada)
What could have been in that budget for me? Well, some student loan relief would have been nice. They could convert student loans into grants or they could increase the amount that I would be receiving in January. They could give my university the relatively tiny amount ($18 million, a rounding error in a federal budget) it needs so that it will not have to operate on austerity budgets from now until forever. I am also a disabled person so they could have increased RDSP contributions or they could update the rules around the Canada Disability Benefit so that I would actually qualify for it based on my situation now instead of what was on last year’s tax return. But none of this is in that budget. There’s really nothing in there for me. It’s great that Canada wants to spend a bunch on the military because that is long overdue but that doesn’t help me at all. They also mentioned wanting to do some infrastructure spending on hospitals. Well, Nanaimo definitely needs a new hospital but since we don’t have an actual plan for it yet, no money of any kind will flow for at least the next several years. After about ten years of this currently non-existent hospital plan passing several layers of bureaucracy we will maybe finally be able to start construction. Will this money still be around in ten years? I doubt it, I think we miss out on it entirely.
So yeah, this budget sucks. Gee, looks like I won’t be voting Liberal yet again! But on the other hand, I was never going to in the first place even if this budget built me a new hospital tomorrow, eliminated my student loan entirely and provided me a steady disability income. But having said that, I’m also not mad about the budget. Every single government ever is going to spend money in ways that every person will feel is unwise. No one ever has a perfect budget and no one ever will. I could be angry that for a single percent of what the government is going to spend on interest on the deficit, I could be set for life. But I don’t need to be mad about that, a vague, wistful sadness will suffice. Is that because I have been successfully distracted?
There is this weird line of thought that I encounter sometimes where people think that the government is constantly trying to distract people because if people could only think for themselves, they’d overthrow the government or some shit. It gets into sovereign citizen territory pretty fast from there and that holds no interest for me. While it is true that I was placed into the social contract without my consent, this is also true of everyone. And I certainly consent to it retroactively. I will pay taxes in exchange for society giving me sidewalks and police officers and safety regulations and food inspectors and all of that fun stuff. I think there are parts of it that could certainly be adjusted but I have never had the urge to burn it all down. I think people who do have that urge haven’t thought through how terrible anarchy would be. But I suppose those folks would look at me and think I’m distracted by shiny things which is absolutely true.
So let’s come back to this budget. I think it sucks. Does Carney care what I think? I doubt it. But for the sake of the hypothetical, let’s say he does. Is “palace intrigue” the answer to this? The shiny he’s dangling in front of me is that someone from the team I don’t like is going over to the other team I don’t like. I have no problem ignoring this when it’s the NHL, so why should Parliament be any different? And how is this a distraction when I can still read news stories about the budget and how much it sucks? I know you’re not a big fan of the CBC but when I look at their news website, one of the current front page headlines is “Let’s see how the federal budget compares to Liberal promises”. Linked from that story is another with the headline of “Canada’s top public servant says budget will result in 40,000 job cuts, programs terminated”. If CBC is supposed to have a bias towards the Liberals (one of the articles mentions that this budget “would explore the idea of strengthening CBC’s independence”) they are not doing a great job of it right now. Those headlines were only a single click away! What kind of distraction is that? I hear Katy Perry is dating Justin Trudeau right now. Give me some of that. I want to know if she wears those colorful latex dresses (either take my word for it or Google it yourself but she’s got bunch of them) on their dates. Now that’s a distraction.
So the distraction isn’t working on me. This budget still sucks. Now what am I supposed to do about it? I have already established I’m not mad enough about it to throw things or shout slogans. I have already established that I wasn’t going to vote Liberal even if they made my budget dreams come true. It’s starting to look like I’m going to do exactly nothing about it, other than waiting for various internet algorithms to be reminded of my particular interest in the fashion styling of Katy Perry. Starting to look like if the floor-crossing chicanery was meant as a distraction, it was a big waste of time. Your mileage may vary, of course.
Well, if the distraction wasn’t for you (who wouldn’t vote liberal) and it wasn’t for me (who wouldn’t vote liberal) could there be someone else the distraction was for? Kind of like an ad for a high end perfume. I ain’t going to buy it, but someone does enough so that they keep pushing such ads out.
Similar that when they said they were getting close to a deal with the US, we kept getting stupid shit happening like digital services taxes or $75M ads, etc, that kibosh whatever progress was being made. Of course, we are never informed what the progress is, but lots of press and anger from Canadians after the desired reaction from the Americans materializes.
So, I have to admit, Carney is one smart cookie.
FTR, it wasn’t a $75M ad, it was a $75,000 ad. It was commissioned by Doug Ford, Ontario’s Conservative premier. Carney had nothing to do with it. And it wasn’t “the Americans” who had a fit over it, it was the orange toddler-in-chief, who constantly has fits over just about anything.
Just to keep the record straight.
Just to keep the record really straight:
CBC: $75M ad. That’s an M for million. I know liberal supporters and whatever Ford is don’t care that the government burns money, they print it after all, but some of us do think it’s important.
CBC: Carney knew about the ad, asked Ford not to run it, and apologized for it to the President. Yay, Team Canada (world police)!
About the only thing you got right was that the orange orangutan got upset and started throwing shit. Funny enough, it doesn’t take a global banker or an Ontario PM to know that would happen and what he would do.
Thanks for the correction. The ad in question cost $75,000 to make. I didn’t realize that Ford had spent as much as $75 million to run it on US networks. But to correct you in return, the Ontario government does not “print money”, and conservatives are not the only ones who are concerned about excessive government spending.
On the contrary, in the US, Republicans have been completely unconcerned about profligate spending as long as it was for something they approve of, like exploding objects for the military or pork projects for their own constituencies. They’re also fine with cutting taxes for the rich and running up the national debt to astronomical levels. If you look at growth of the national debt under different US presidents, it’s always worse under Republican administrations. So much for conservatism and fiscal responsibility!
I’m not about to defend Doug Ford, but I presume he regarded the $75M as an investment to help change American opinions on tariffs, which may be hurting Ontario more than other places because of its large manufacturing base.
And the only time a province tried to “print money,” the Supreme Court of Canada shot it down, as being unconstitutional. See Constitution s. 91 (15). The time was the 1930s, the province was Alberta, the premier was “Bible Bill” Aberhart, and the verdict was that by issuing “prosperity certificates,” the province was trying to print its own money. Lots more details here, but that would be a hijack from the main topic of the thread.
As I mentioned previously in another thread, I saw the ad in question, and saw nothing objectionable about it. If anything, it might have raised awareness among Americans that Canada (Ontario specifically) is not a land of perpetual ice and snow, that it does have industries and people working in them, and that it supplies America with a lot of what America needs. In my experience, that is what some Americans need to know: that Canada is not some shithole (Trump’s word) socialist country living off the government teat; it is a thriving, wealthy, capitalist, first-world country, whose citizens enjoy a very high standard of living.
If nothing else, those ads that Ford commissioned and that Trump hated may make some Americans think twice about what their northern neighbour does, and what it does for them. And that’s the point.
I’m curious how Carney could’ve stopped him from sending it out.
Question: In these non-confidence votes, are all MPs present? Or maybe there are a couple off due to illness or family issues? This could turn the tables either way.
It’s one of the ways that the minority can show their displeasure without having the government fall - they ensure that there is a quorum but a sufficient number of members don’t show up in the house for the vote so it still passes.
The people saying Carney should have stopped Ford from running that ad are the same people who would have denounced Carney as a tyrant if he’d even tried to stop it.
I don’t know? How do you convince people on your ‘Team’ to not do stupid things?
'Hey, Doug. We are in sensitive negotiations and are close to making a deal so don’t do anything to fuck with it"
You don’t have to be a dictator to convince people to do something detrimental to the country you bloody well represent. Maybe just be a good leader.
Just so I’m caught up, have we officially dropped the theory that Ford ran the ad as part of a conspiracy to boost Carney’s popularity?
Doug Ford is the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario. (provinicial) Mark Carney is the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada (federal)
They are not from the same party - not even remotely so. I’m sure Carney said something like that to Ford at some point. And Ford likely responded with “Thanks for your input Mark, we’re doing what we want.”
You think they’re on the same “Team”. I guess you’re referring to “Team Canada”. I also guess you’re a little fuzzy on the political realities of federal v. provincial politics, as well as the different political parties.