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New Canadian Politics Thread

zeke said:
Some amazing narrative attempts by the cons:

- simply a power grab by Trudeau
- make no mistake, NDP has the power
Click to expand...


It’s basically a continuation of the same narrative they premiered under Stephen Harper when it comes to formal coalitions, or formal power-sharing agreements between parties.

Basically that it’s an illegitimate, undemocratic power grab and that “people didn’t vote for this”. Which is an extremely cynical and gross position to take, considering this is literally how parliamentary democracy is supposed to function.

Bottom line: the government has the confidence of a majority of MP’s in parliament, and those MP’s represent 50.44% of voters in the most recent election. So arguably, this government is more representative of the will of the electorate than any single-party majority government since Mulroney’s PC’s won 50% of the vote back in 1984.

And the main CPC beef with this is really that the party has run off so far to the right of all the rest of the parties in parliament that coalitions or power-sharing agreements just aren’t an option for them. It’s majority or bust.

And that’s entirely their fault. It really wasn’t that long ago that a minority Stephen Harper government was supported by the Liberals. If the current CPC wasn’t so far off into looney tunes land, they could have been the ones extracting concessions from the Libs instead of the NDP.
 
LeafGm said:
It’s basically a continuation of the same narrative they premiered under Stephen Harper when it comes to formal coalitions, or formal power-sharing agreements between parties

Basically that it’s an illegitimate, undemocratic power grab and that “people didn’t vote for this”. Which is an extremely cynical and gross position to take, considering this is literally how parliamentary democracy is supposed to function.

Bottom line: the government has the confidence of a majority of MP’s in parliament, and those MP’s represent 50.44% of voters in the most recent election. So arguably, this government is more representative of the will of the electorate than any single-party majority government since Mulroney’s PC’s won 50% of the vote back in 1984.

And the main CPC beef with this is really that the party has run off so far to the right of all the rest of the parties in parliament that coalitions or power-sharing agreements just aren’t an option for them. It’s majority or bust.

And that’s entirely their fault. It really wasn’t that long ago that a minority Stephen Harper government was supported by the Liberals. If the current CPC wasn’t so far off into looney tunes land, they could have been the ones extracting concessions from the Libs instead of the NDP.
Click to expand...

Yeah I think the cons maybe don't realize that pretty much all the Trudeau voters are ABC voters at this point. And that most are actually frustrated that the majority vote gets split between libs and ndp and thus neutered.

As long as this coalition doesn't do anything too stupid its going to be hard to win anyone over with a "you didn't vote for this" spiel.

Edit: ABC = anything but conservative
 
zeke said:
Some amazing narrative attempts by the cons:

- simply a power grab by Trudeau
- make no mistake, NDP has the power
Click to expand...
the cons seem to be totally unequipped to make any substantive reply.

perhaps because deep down they know that a vast majority of Canadians are going to support the new legislative agenda. or perhaps because they are incompetent ninnies. who knows.
 
UWHabs said:
Dental/pharma was the big bullet point, but housing affordability is the #2 point on the cooperation agreement. But it was pretty vague.
Click to expand...

Ya they tend to throw that in to every single platform. From 2015:
liberal.ca

Trudeau promises affordable housing for Canadians | Liberal Party of Canada

TORONTO – Liberals will invest in the middle class and those working hard to join it by making it easier to find an affordable place to call home, said the Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, Justin Trudeau, today. “Safe, adequate, and affordable housing is essential to building strong...
liberal.ca liberal.ca

I'm sure they're working on it. These things take time. Avg house price in the country is only up like 110% since then.
 
WellPlayed said:
Ya they tend to throw that in to every single platform. From 2015:
liberal.ca

Trudeau promises affordable housing for Canadians | Liberal Party of Canada

TORONTO – Liberals will invest in the middle class and those working hard to join it by making it easier to find an affordable place to call home, said the Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, Justin Trudeau, today. “Safe, adequate, and affordable housing is essential to building strong...
liberal.ca liberal.ca

I'm sure they're working on it. These things take time. Avg house price in the country is only up like 110% since then.
Click to expand...

Serious question though....how do you bring enough housing units online in the places people actually want to live for it to shift the economics?

Let's be real, this isn't a "national" problem. It's 2 regions, 1000's of km's away from each other that have the problem. No one is worried about the cost of housing in Saskatoon, or Timmins. You can buy a small detached house in Windsor for 250-300K, 200K in Thunder Bay.

I'm honestly not sure what we expect the feds to do when this is a problem with municipal and provincial layers. There's local transit layers that in Ontario & Toronto specifically, failure was just a way of life for decades regarding. It's hard to promote increased density (which brings greater affordability) without more high volume transit routes. This appears to have finally been figured out, but you just can't make up for 30 years of wandering in the wilderness on transit. Then there's regional transit layers that again, are just now finally being sorted out. Bedroom communities can be a great source of affordable single family housing. Most small and medium sized cities within 200-300km of major European cities have rail access that makes commuting viable. That would be Ontario equivalent of living in Kingston or London and being able to relatively comfortably commute to Toronto for work. There's zoning layers that are entirely municipal which Canadian cities are again, just now starting to figure out but can't be expected to start making a decent in affordable housing supply until the back half of this decade.

The federal government could open up the vault, fuck about with some tax regs, etc but they have limited direct ability to manage what is a very regional problem.
 
MindzEye said:
Serious question though....how do you bring enough housing units online in the places people actually want to live for it to shift the economics?

Let's be real, this isn't a "national" problem. It's 2 regions, 1000's of km's away from each other that have the problem. No one is worried about the cost of housing in Saskatoon, or Timmins. You can buy a small detached house in Windsor for 250-300K, 200K in Thunder Bay.

I'm honestly not sure what we expect the feds to do when this is a problem with municipal and provincial layers. There's local transit layers that in Ontario & Toronto specifically, failure was just a way of life for decades regarding. It's hard to promote increased density (which brings greater affordability) without more high volume transit routes. This appears to have finally been figured out, but you just can't make up for 30 years of wandering in the wilderness on transit. Then there's regional transit layers that again, are just now finally being sorted out. Bedroom communities can be a great source of affordable single family housing. Most small and medium sized cities within 200-300km of major European cities have rail access that makes commuting viable. That would be Ontario equivalent of living in Kingston or London and being able to relatively comfortably commute to Toronto for work. There's zoning layers that are entirely municipal which Canadian cities are again, just now starting to figure out but can't be expected to start making a decent in affordable housing supply until the back half of this decade.

The federal government could open up the vault, fuck about with some tax regs, etc but they have limited direct ability to manage what is a very regional problem.
Click to expand...


Something that comes to mind for me is that maybe housing should no longer be treated as a pure speculative commodity?

Because what’s driving up the prices more than a lack of supply or foreign buyers IMO are corporations and wealthy individuals buying up huge quantities of the available inventory so that they can turn around and rent it out and/or hold it as a rapidly appreciating asset on their balance sheet.

Maybe, at least when it comes to residential real estate, corporations should be out of that game altogether? And for individuals, maybe there should be a limit on the number of residential properties you own and don’t intend to live in?

Otherwise, what’s the eventual end game here for anyone who’s anywhere near one of Canada’s major population centres? Something reminiscent of the late Roman Republic, where small individual land/home owners essentially disappear, a small monied class owns all the property and everyone else forms a permanent underclass that rents for their entire lives?
 
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