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New Canadian Politics Thread

The odd thing about the absence of other leftys on this forum is that most of the advance stats nerddom on twitter is left.
 
BeLeafer said:
Centrist sure, left wing ... lol
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I'll rephrase - predominantly centrist with left-wing leanings.

I mean I can think of maybe one person on here who would consider voting conservative this election, and then a whole bunch who would consider any of the three parties on the left. Of course I'm making some assumptions here, but I don't think they're unreasonable.

If the forum's political threads were to be characterized as either left-leaning or right-leaning, I would definitely go with left-leaning.

My original point still stands though. I'm even okay expanding it to more diverse opinions on both sides of the spectrum.
 
Wayward DP said:
I'll rephrase - predominantly centrist with left-wing leanings.

I mean I can think of maybe one person on here who would consider voting conservative this election, and then a whole bunch who would consider any of the three parties on the left. Of course I'm making some assumptions here, but I don't think they're unreasonable.

If the forum's political threads were to be characterized as either left-leaning or right-leaning, I would definitely go with left-leaning.

My original point still stands though. I'm even okay expanding it to more diverse opinions on both sides of the spectrum.
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that's valid only if you think the current canadian political parties fall neatly on that spectrum.

the liberals are actually probably a bit right on the political spectrum overall.
 
I look at it this way - with Cons/Repubs you get neocons, with Libs/Dems you get neoliberal. Both are well to the right politically, even if the latter pretend to be 'progressive'. Of course, the current Libs and Dems are increasingly cozying up with neocons.

With establishment parties, it's a very right wing political universe these days.
 
to be totally honest I'm not sure how you can objectively measure things like this.

I mean I personally think of the Liberals as a centre/left party. In the US they'd be socialists and in Scandinavia they'd be deeply conservative. they're definitely to the left of the Cons. usually to the right of the Greens and NDP. but not universally. CBC vote compass also has them as being more centre/left than centre/right IIRC.

I guess I find it easier to position the parties relative to one another than in a vacuum. and I'm pretty sure our personal biases also affect our perceptions of left/right
 
You can measure it by things like how strongly people defend press freedom, human rights and things like that. Lots of people pretend to do this but when it comes to people like Julian Assange, Palestians and Venezulans, these concerns vanish.
 
BeLeafer said:
I look at it this way - with Cons/Repubs you get neocons, with Libs/Dems you get neoliberal. Both are well to the right politically, even if the latter pretend to be 'progressive'. Of course, the current Libs and Dems are increasingly cozying up with neocons.

With establishment parties, it's a very right wing political universe these days.
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So Justin's liberals have done the following things in office:
- increase income tax on the wealthiest
- universal child care benefit
- all the mortgage rules to cool the market (stress tests, etc)
- made an effort to bring in, proportionally, a ton of Syrian refugees (vs other countries)
- laughed off the idea of balanced budgets, and likely entered us into a structural deficit (granted, right wingers do this too, but not usually intentionally)
- federal carbon tax

I have a hard time characterizing this government as being 'well to the right'. Chretien or Martin Liberals you can probably make a more convincing argument. But less sure about Justin.
 
If Julian Assange is the hill to die on, I'm definitely not a lefty. Assange shouldn't be the banner carrier for freedom of the press though.
 
Wayward DP said:
So Justin's liberals have done the following things in office:
- increase income tax on the wealthiest
- universal child care benefit
- all the mortgage rules to cool the market (stress tests, etc)
- made an effort to bring in, proportionally, a ton of Syrian refugees (vs other countries)
- laughed off the idea of balanced budgets, and likely entered us into a structural deficit (granted, right wingers do this too, but not usually intentionally)
- federal carbon tax

I have a hard time characterizing this government as being 'well to the right'. Chretien or Martin Liberals you can probably make a more convincing argument. But less sure about Justin.
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- Second nation (and 1st major economic nation) to legalize ganj
 
BL do you think that Wikileaks is and has always been totally independent of Russia?

I think that may have a lot to do with why people are not rallying behind Assange
 
zeke said:
that's valid only if you think the current canadian political parties fall neatly on that spectrum.

the liberals are actually probably a bit right on the political spectrum overall.
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by what standard?

By a Canadian Standard, they are left, if ever so slightly.

By a US Standard, they are way to the left, practically commies.

Western European maybe on the right, if ever so slightly. Eastern Europe, left.

I don't know how you can characterize the liberals as being on the right.
 
Wayward DP said:
BL do you think that Wikileaks is and has always been totally independent of Russia?

I think that may have a lot to do with why people are not rallying behind Assange
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The reason a lot of people are not defending him is because he was successfully smeared by the people he exposed. The claim that he worked with the Russians is the latest of those smears.
 
Assange went from merely freedom of information to deliberately trying to influence elections in a specific direction, which is where he lost me.
 
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