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Originally Posted by Table 5
I'll give PP a chance...even if by default. I'm not really seeing any viable alternatives at the moment other than voting Conservative. The NDP stray way too far from me on most policy (although I would like a dental plan!), and for me to consider voting Liberal again, they will to be purged top to bottom. They need a total reset, which I think only comes with an election annihilation.
Poilievre is no Peter Lougheed, but the world is trending populist, and it would probably be a benefit for Canada to have someone who's able to operate within that mindset/trend, especially if you want to get anywhere with our neighbours down south. Things went too extreme in one direction, and will most likely go extreme in the other in order to self-correct...but hey, there should be plenty for all of you to argue about in here.
I do think a guy like Carney puts the Liberals back towards some respectability. I'm not sure the world needs another rich banker at the top, especially with his environmental policies, but at least the guy appears to be somewhat competent. Any of the options from the existing government would be a hard no from me.
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I don't really see the basis for saying that the Liberals' tenure has been extreme, in a way that will be equally countered by Conservative extremism. They're really not two sides of the same coin (at least based on Conservative rhetoric; their actual policies remain to be seen). The Liberals are dyed in the wool centrist neoliberals, and their policies generally reflected that. They'd give lip service the progressive things, but the only time they actually did anything substantial in that direction was when they were forced to in order to stay in power as a minority government.
Their problem is that they were incompetent. So they were generally incoherent and uninspiring policy wise, and they were completely asleep at the wheel when temporary immigration got way out of control.
But ultimately, they were still centrists and I don't really see how you could characterize much or their tenure as being remotely extreme. People talk about "out of control spending" like we're spending at historic levels, but that's really not backed up by the data. Here's federal spending as a % of GDP and we're currently way below the '80s and '90s and barely above the 2000s and 2010s:
1980s: 21.5% of GDP
1990s: 20.6% of GDP
2000s: 15.5% of GDP
2010s: 14.8% of GDP
Current: 16.2% of GDP
Granted, we don't know how the Conservatives will rule. It's possible they'll be generally centrist as well when it comes to actual policy. But their current rhetoric is fundamentally different (and I'd argue far more dangerous) than the Liberals when they were in the same position in 2015, so I wouldn't assume they'll moderate much.