Perhaps they could engage in more mature reflection. A lot of your arguments are seemingly based on hypothetical Trumpian projections. I agree the current CPC might not favour all these policies.
Real economics have been a Conservative strength and might be again. Canadian foreign policy in China, for example, has been inconsistent and frustrating. What advances have been made to be less dependent on the US given their isolationist inclinations? Trade is still good for Canada. If Conservatives favour business, what about the 70% that have been disrupted? How can we protect Canada’s North, water, resources, people? Is the world becoming safer? No one wants to build walls here.
But if their policies begin and end on vaccination and largely settled social issues than they are perhaps not reaching their potential and this is what I think Coyne is talking about.
My list is far from complete. Interprovincial business? Equalization? Keeping Canadian business competitive with multinationals including local investment? Should you have better or different rights only because you work for a federal government or industry?
Changing this would require a constitutional amendment. And it can work the other way as well - you might have better rights if you work in a provincially regulated workplace (which is roughly 90% of all Canadian workers).
Or I suppose the federal government could get out of workplace regulation and just adopt the provincial labour laws for each province, so federally regulated employers and employees would have exactly the same regime as the provincially regulated workplaces.
My highly amateur legal studies make me poorly qualified to suggest the best reforms. Privacy law uses “substantially similar” language but is somewhat different in BC and Alberta. Workplace law has bigger variations.
Decisions seem to be trending, to my unstudied eyes, to more American over British precedents and more use of Constitutional values in civil matters. The government clearly did not break the law when analyzing movements during Covid - that does not make concerns invalid. Some areas of law were updated decades before recent innovations and the system as a whole might better use technology and provide access. That said, I was very reassured by the general fairness and common sense of Canadian law and the usual logic and common sense of judges and jurisprudence.
I don’t think having a fragmented bunch of labour laws across the country would be a positive thing for our confederation. I see it potentially leading to a “race to the bottom”, as certain provincial governments gut labour laws that are sensibly protecting workers, in order to benefit corporations who pay the politicians. Your mileage may vary.
But we do have a fragmented system now. Labour laws vary from province to province, and federally.
Just responding to @Dr_Paprika’s suggestion that employees in federally regulated workplaces shouldn’t have special provisions just because they’re federal. Since jurisdiciton over the workplace is divided by type of industry, there is no easy way to achieve uniformity.
The feds have adopted provincial minimum wage laws, so everyone working in a particular province gets the same minimum wage. However, I’m not aware of any other area where the feds have adopted provincial labour standards.
It’s also not the case now that federally regulated workplaces automatically have laws more favourable to the employees than provincially regulated ones. For example, under the federal labour standards, a new hire is entitled to two weeks vacation per year. Under Saskatchewan labour laws, new hires get 15 days.
I am unconcerned by differences like that, which I see as very similar, though they are relevant to some. I understand how the situation came to be organically, due to constitutional limits on jurisdiction. In business, a great fuss is sometimes made over uniform standards, but they do not always add that much value. Perhaps there is merit and reason to some local variations.
But I would be very interested to hear detached legal experts discuss which of our laws do need reform. Despite the value of precedents, many authors of the basic texts I read do argue for a need for reform in their area, or imply a lack of legislative will, or committees that make suggestions are affected by new elections. Maybe this is the researchers equivalent of “more study is needed” and the problem is not pressing. I couldn’t say.
The Conservatives seem to have possible candidates in Poilievre, Lewis and Mulroney Jr. - if capable hands like Brown, Harper and MacKay are out. Bergen seems like a lovely person from recent quotes.
But I can’t see anyone beating Poilievre, and he is a very polarizing figure, a very skillful speaker, far too political to focus on most of my above goals (some of which are too divisive to be practically addressed in the short term, and requiring vision beyond that).
A lot of political commentators agree with you. I think if he gets in, the CPC will lose a lot of the centrist vote. And that will damage them. Pollievre Carrys a lot of nasty baggage with him, and there are not enough antivaccers or neo nazis to balance the voters he will lose
Given the seething rage roiling around Ottawa thanks to the “fuckwits of freedom” it would be lovely to hang that albatross around Poilievre neck come election time.
As with a lot of right wing resentment, there’s a HUGE fixation of Trudeau. Remove him from the equation and it’s just the Liberals the Conservatives would be up against and that’s just boring policy - where’s the fun in that.
On the American RWNJ I occasionally look at, they’ve been discussing the Ottawa truckers’ protest. They are weirdly fixated on Trudeau, to the point where they never mention the Liberal Party or the Canadian Government or Parliament; it’s always Trudeau, as if he’s a dictator who controls everything.
And they never call him by his name. It’s “Justine,” “Blackface Trudeau,” and the occasional “Soyboy.” Third-grade schoolyard name-calling at its finest.
Fixation on Trudeau (either one) has been a fixture of western Canadian conservatives for decades. It’s one of the biggest turn offs and vote losers I can think of that the Conservatives continually go back to. I suppose the US dominionists/RW nut jobs are just aping what they see from their bubble.
I am gathering that a lot of the money coming in to support the rebel flag waving white supremacists who have sucked the truckers into this protest is coming from US Trumpers and the other assorted dingbats. They actually don’t know anything about this “freedumb” protest, or even about Canada, but they are rubes, and they are being fleeced by someone.
There does seem to be a huge number of people with disposable income willing to throw their money into things that make their lives feel meaningful. It’s not a disagreement about trucker vaccination mandates, it’s fighting tyranny and helping God’s plan come to fruition.
Yep. This main policy plank of “We hate Trudeau and so should you” has been a losing proposition for them since the 2015 election, when the Conservative Brain Trust seemed to think that making fun of Trudeau’s hair, or his former profession, or giving him effeminate nicknames was a winning strategy. They don’t seem to have learned much since then.
And yet, Harper was the one who insisted on giving his name to the government. I think Harper was better than many do, but that kind of branding takes chutzpah.