Canadian Federal Politics Thread v5

[Johnny Makarov]

Originally Posted by Locke

Its funny...we rag on Donald Trump for his 'Cult of Personality' and yet...

Well look at all these Pierre voters. They can't even give one reason of why they are voting for him. Olive branches in both ears so that can't hear a single noise.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Cowboy89

I think this says more about the people making incongruent comments between the two threads than the actual reality:

They don't want a conservative majority government in Canada and the cognitive dissonance required between the takes in the two different threads is to downplay the price that has to be paid by Canada upfront here on the Trump/US file thanks to the timing of Trudeau's resignation through prorogation to give a non-conservative alternative a punchers chance at forming a reasonable opposition to the CPC in the next election. They just don't want to admit the steepness of that price because that in itself is a valid argument to punish the Liberals when it's finally election time.

How many believe a Trump-friendly CPC is better suited to push against his whims than literally anyone else?

The UCP are already kissing the ring.

EDIT: also, can y’all learn what “cognitive dissonance” actually means? Jaysus chrayst.

[Johnny Makarov]

Originally Posted by Doctorfever

Don’t send all your money to the Liberals, or it will be tits-up Tuesday.

Can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings!!

Whopping cough, measles, small pox, tuberculosis and prob syphillis.

Pesos for Pierre! Well you already your account frozen by the rcmp once before...

[topfiverecords]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Sorry, I’ve already started producing “Piss on Pierre” stickers, flags, t-shirts, posters, coasters, bandanas, bananas, decals, car flags, fortune cookies, etc.

This train can’t be stopped.

EDIT: For anyone wondering, I was going to go with “Piss off, Pierre!” but wanted to retain the sexual energy of the original with a kink twist.

The "#### Freeland!" stickers are going to be amazing.

[Johnny Makarov]

Originally Posted by topfiverecords

The "#### Freeland!" stickers are going to be amazing.

Sponsored by Putin and the KGB.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

How many believe a Trump-friendly CPC is better suited to push against his whims than literally anyone else?

The UCP are already kissing the ring.

It's not that crazy an argument. Trump doesn't personally sit in these negotiations day after day. His schtick simply requires that if a negotiation is perceived as adversarial he will only be interested in an outcome that allows him to say "I won, it's a victory for me over our enemy who has been robbing us all these years, what a great win for the USA" and so forth. If the other side of the table is perceived as aligned with him, there's more room to sell a less "we beat them story, a la "This is a great result for both countries and a great new partnership with a leader who I have a very good relationship with, and is much better than the loser who was there before". Especially if he thinks PP is more likely to say nice things about him in the aftermath than Trudeau or whoever the LPC has representing us, which seems... yknow, more or less certain.

[Doctorfever]

Originally Posted by Johnny Makarov

Whopping cough, measles, small pox, tuberculosis and prob syphillis.

Pesos for Pierre! Well you already your account frozen by the rcmp once before...

Wine, women, song, and vice

[Cowboy89]

Originally Posted by Slava

Who pays those tariffs?

This is a fun argument because it typically brings out the same people who argue that 'Albertans don't pay transfer payments' on the basis that they don't actually pull our their check books and pay other provinces directly.

Explicitly in a transactional sense the US importers will pay the tariff for the goods they import from Canada and any price impact they will pass on to their customers who ultimately are US consumers.

That said the dynamic pricing for Canadian goods will be impacted by the tariffs in the sense that producers might have to discount their product prices to maintain sales or in the case of commodities the marginal price could be downwardly impacted by the tariff so that in a sense the Canadian producer absorbs a portion of the margin impact due to the tariff, therefore spreading the economic impact of the tariff beyond the importer who explicitly pays the tariff.

[Johnny Makarov]

Originally Posted by Doctorfever

Wine, women, song, and vice

Yup you are living in a fantasy world. lol 72 virgins for you too!

[SebC]

Originally Posted by trackercowe

I just wish everyone would give PP a chance before writing him off, and saying he's not fit for the role of Prime Minister. That's the part of partisan politics I loathe in 2025, where people are so quick to write off candidates before seeing what they can do. I think the majority of votes gave Trudeau his opportunity for "real change" coming out of Harper's term as PM. Trudeau was given the mandate as majority leader in 2015. Many progressives voted for Trudeau, after reading the tea leaves and agreeing change was needed. Yet in 2025 so many are willing to throw politicians under the bus without even giving them a day in office.

This isn't a Trump situation where they already had four years to base his Presidency on. PP may not be the warmest character in the political realm, but I would hope Canadians at least give him that same chance Trudeau had before they judge his impeding tenure as PM.

Time to re-quote myself again!

Originally Posted by SebC

The problem with Poilievre is that he likes to indulge the alt-right in its nonsense.

A good example of this is that Poilievre said he'd ban cabinet members from attending the World Economic Forum. Is that a big deal? No, not really. But normalizing decision-making based on the whims of conspiracy theorists absolutely is. The best hope for bringing the alt-right back to reality is for the centre-right to reel them in. But instead, Poilievre lets them pull him.

But that's a benign example. There are others that are worse.

Poilievre wants to defund the CBC and promotes the idea that it is Liberal propaganda. He consistently attacks mainstream journalism. Would eliminating our national broadcaster to create a right-wing mediasphere controlled by the wealthy not permanently damage Canada?

Poilievre supports eliminating the carbon tax, I'd wager because it makes him popular with climate change deniers. One consequence of this is that other countries might impose their own carbon taxes on our exports and collect the revenue themselves, instead of us collecting it.

Poilievre blames Trudeau's spending for inflation, even though the whole global economy had inflation. If he were in charge, Canadians would've gotten less help to get through the pandemic. Poilievre rejected dental care for children under 12 in low income families and a one time $500 transfer to low income renters because he viewed it as inflationary spending!

Speaking of pandemics, Poilievre's desire to endorse those who reject science and fight for the right to be disease vectors leads to the kind of policies that have a body count. This is a guy who choses to side with the rats in a plague because they vote for him.

It's not just the immunocompromised and seniors who Poilievre is willing to sacrifice to his party's lunatics. Poilievre supports Danielle Smith's puberty blocker ban, which I've already explained is awful policy. He's throwing trans people under the bus because it's politically convenient. And if a trans person gets attacked by an alt right nutjob he won't be holding the knife. But he'll have been in that person's ear telling them that they're right.

What will be the long-term effects of an alt-right that's been emboldened by Poilievre? If they have learned that they will get their way if they throw a temper tantrum, even if their way kills people?

How would Poilievre react, say, if the next alt-right theory is that First Nations people are ruining Canada? He won't send them to the gas chambers, but based on his track record, I wouldn't put it past him to dog-whistle, rather than condemn, those who would. How might his successor react, if Poilievre shows appeasing the alt-right to be an effective electoral strategy? There's a fire and instead of fighting it he's adding fuel. If we can control it later then there won't be too much permanent harm from a Poilievre government, but what if we can't?

Supporting conspiracy theory nonsense instead of denouncing it ought to be disqualifying.

The chance I will give Poilievre is to reverse course and denounce his former self.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by Hot_Flatus

Interesting how there is little said about the move to prorogue parliament this time, yet when the Conservatives did it under Harper, you could have sworn someone stomped on someone's cat with the media circus that ensued.

Precedent's been established. It sucks but it is what it is now.

[SebC]

As long as our executive branch has the power to put retaliatory tariffs on electric vehicles we can apply a lot of counter-pressure on Trump.

[Sylvanfan]

I remember in the last Trump administration that the Tarriffs created a lot of excess paperwork. The Steel Fabricator that I worked for had to hire 4 extra people to help with excess paperwork and other odd stuff like if we bought a raw piece of plate to cut parts and the plate was from the US we could largely be exempt from tariffs...but we had to send the scrap pieces back to the U.S. eventually all those folks got let go after that run of U.S work finished up and many of the tariffs were removed plus ownership deciding to shutter their U.S. operation.

[Cappy]

Originally Posted by Cowboy89

I think this says more about the people making incongruent comments between the two threads than the actual reality:

They don't want a conservative majority government in Canada and the cognitive dissonance required between the takes in the two different threads is to downplay the price that has to be paid by Canada upfront here on the Trump/US file thanks to the timing of Trudeau's resignation through prorogation to give a non-conservative alternative a punchers chance at forming a reasonable opposition to the CPC in the next election. They just don't want to admit the steepness of that price because that in itself is a valid argument to punish the Liberals when it's finally election time.

Trump is Trump. He's either going to impose tariffs or he isn't.

If he imposes tariffs, then we need to retaliate. That's the threat, and it always has been.

Maybe we get our heads out of our asses as a country and start diversifying our trade (and i mean that in a non-partisan way)

[Torture]

Originally Posted by Ryan Coke

I think the problem is that I would suspect that Trump doesn’t want to give Trudeau or the Liberals a win, as he likely would prefer to see PP get elected.

I think you are overestimating the amount of ####s that Donald Trump gives about the Canadian political system.

[chemgear]

Originally Posted by SebC

As long as our executive branch has the power to put retaliatory tariffs on electric vehicles we can apply a lot of counter-pressure on Trump.

Originally Posted by Cappy

If he imposes tariffs, then we need to retaliate. That's the threat, and it always has been.

The liberals are hiding from Parliament. Everybody knows they can't do anything at least until April, no bills, no retaliation tariffs in return, lame duck government. Nevermind they aren't going to care about anything other than their own leadership campaigns.

Interesting that they liberals got legal advice to pick how long they were going to prorogue. It's the longest that they could go without approving new spending. If Trudeau could have prorogued Parliament for longer into June or July, he would have.

[Cappy]

Originally Posted by chemgear

The liberals are hiding from Parliament. Everybody knows they can't do anything at least until April, no bills, no retaliation tariffs in return, lame duck government. Nevermind they aren't going to care about anything other than their own leadership campaigns.

Interesting that they liberals got legal advice to pick how long they were going to prorogue. It's the longest that they could go without approving new spending. If Trudeau could have prorogued Parliament for longer into June or July, he would have.

This is my ignorance, but can tariffs be put into place without legislative approval?

Provincial governments have mostly responded with retaliation threats? can they do so without Fed/leg approval?

If not, thats a big issue, i agree.

But i think the threat of retaliation (in February or July) is the same.

[Monahammer]

Originally Posted by Cappy

Trump is Trump. He's either going to impose tariffs or he isn't.

If he imposes tariffs, then we need to retaliate. That's the threat, and it always has been.

Maybe we get our heads out of our asses as a country and start diversifying our trade (and i mean that in a non-partisan way)

The most substantial hurdle we have to climb for diversifying our economy is not desire to do so, it's an infrastructure barrier. We have overbuilt export capacity to our southern border, and virtually no large scale export facilities for our energy products. Because of the Canadian court system and some policy decisions, we are basically prevented from building new export facilities in economically reasonable time frames.

Private capital will not allocate itself because of uncertainty. This is why the government had to buy the trans mountain pipeline to get it done. Likely we are stuck in this morass until the court situation is fixed, somehow. Frankly I dont know if it can under the current legal structure of the country.

[Monahammer]

Originally Posted by Cappy

This is my ignorance, but can tariffs be put into place without legislative approval?

Provincial governments have mostly responded with retaliation threats? can they do so without Fed/leg approval?

If not, thats a big issue, i agree.

But i think the threat of retaliation (in February or July) is the same.

No, we cannot apply new tariffs without legislative action.

[Cappy]

Originally Posted by Monahammer

The most substantial hurdle we have to climb for diversifying our economy is not desire to do so, it's an infrastructure barrier. We have overbuilt export capacity to our southern border, and virtually no large scale export facilities for our energy products. Because of the Canadian court system and some policy decisions, we are basically prevented from building new export facilities in economically reasonable time frames.

Private capital will not allocate itself because of uncertainty. This is why the government had to buy the trans mountain pipeline to get it done. Likely we are stuck in this morass until the court situation is fixed, somehow. Frankly I dont know if it can under the current legal structure of the country.

A rogue trading partner to the south is the perfect reason to begin looking at those options.