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New Canadian Politics Thread

Wayward DP said:
people's attitudes about Trudeau is exactly the point because it will cause them to vote for PP
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PP isn't as bad as Trump, so it lets people be a little more angry vs JT without "worrying". Plus in Canada you do have other parties so there's some places where you can easily vote against the Liberals and all it will do is switch some of those seats to the NDP.

There's still the big question of how much of the anger and resentment against Justin will be forgiven when we actually get deep into an election campaign and you see PP on a daily basis. Or, alternately, with still another year left, how much further can they dig themselves? if they had an election now, the Liberals would lose. If they keep going for another year, is there a chance they fall further, and end up more like the Ontario Liberals, barely relevant anymore?
 
UWHabs said:
PP isn't as bad as Trump, so it lets people be a little more angry vs JT without "worrying". Plus in Canada you do have other parties so there's some places where you can easily vote against the Liberals and all it will do is switch some of those seats to the NDP.

There's still the big question of how much of the anger and resentment against Justin will be forgiven when we actually get deep into an election campaign and you see PP on a daily basis. Or, alternately, with still another year left, how much further can they dig themselves? if they had an election now, the Liberals would lose. If they keep going for another year, is there a chance they fall further, and end up more like the Ontario Liberals, barely relevant anymore?
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Your assertion that PP isn't as bad as Trump is only true today because PP has never held any real power to fuck around. But as I said yesterday, all he needs to prove he is every bit as bad as Trump is the opportunity. He panders to all the same deplorables that Trump does. He is funded by the same dark money interests that fund MAGA. His lying bullshit is platformed by the same Russian bot farms and bad actors. Why do you think Tucker Carlson came to Canada on that white grievance tour a few months back? Why did Don Jr. come this week? Who benefits from this?

The only way that Poilievre doesn't become as bad as Trump is if he never wins an election. If he does, all bets are off.
 
part of what is scary about PP vs dotard is that PP is likely to be competent in implementing his agenda in ways dotard would never be capable of.
 
lecoqsportif said:
The biggliest difference is that congress controls the budget, not the prez.
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Yup. A President also can only really "make" laws under a fairly narrow scope (signing statements) unless their party control 2 elected legislative bodies and not 1. A PM with a majority can functionally write laws.
 
MindzEye said:
Yup. A President also can only really "make" laws under a fairly narrow scope (signing statements) unless their party control 2 elected legislative bodies and not 1. A PM with a majority can functionally write laws.
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Basically PM is head of congress and president.
 
In Canada we have British style democracy. The British ruling class had little use for democracy but they had no choice and they wanted to keep the monarchy so this is what we have. It's basically a 4 year dictatorship because unlike the US Congress, MP's are bound by party discipline to vote with their party on pretty much everything. No one needs to get a phone call from the boss begging them to vote for some piece of legislation. Rank and file MP's are expected to do what they're told and vote for or against whatever their leader tells them to, especially on votes where confidence is attached. So a PM with a majority can basically do whatever the fuck they want to do. US Presidents rarely have that kind of near-absolute power (short of staging a coup to install a fascist dictatorship, of course)

The US has more checks and balances baked in to prevent despotism while the British system has a certain level of dictatorship baked in. In both houses of Congress, Members and Senators have much more freedom to "vote their conscience" (i.e. whatever the lobbyists who own them demand they vote for) so the President has to do a lot of cat-herding to get laws passed. In Canada the PM says "Mush!" and the MP's pull the sled. Their personal beliefs don't enter into it. They technically have free will to vote as they choose but in reality and if they want to still have a job tomorrow, they actually don't.

During Pierre Trudeau's tenure as PM, the most powerful person in the Canadian government was actually Michael Pitfield, who was Clerk of the Privy Council, the most powerful civil servant in the country. He was the ultimate gatekeeper and what he controlled mostly was access to Trudeau. When Joe Clark got elected the first person he had fired was Pitfield. And nine months later when Trudeau came back into power, Pitfield was the first person he hired. And while Pitfield ran the civil service he structured things in such a way as to make himself more powerful. If you want to know why the federal civil service is a clusterfuck, now you know. It was by design.
 
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