Canadian Federal Politics Thread v5

[Cappy]

Macleans just did an article on young conservative voters and it points to a lot of the same issues/factors

https://macleans.ca/longforms/the-ri...rvative-youth/

Generally raised in "conservative" households (whether or not political) a few children of business owners. Most of their news comes from online sources (tiktok) and even a few mentions for Natpo and other Postmedia rags.

Many of the gripes are common and over all basic understanding of economics/policy.
- cost of living is high.
- taxes are bad.
- immigration is too high.
- free speech!

Most of these voters would have grown up in a Justin Trudeau Canada and a Donald Trump world. They have only ever known JT as a PM; and are absolutely inundated with MAGA talking points.

One could argue this is the eb and flow of generational politics. These kids see themselves as rebels or outside thinkers to the overall liberal cultural mood of the last 20 years. Although they do seem to fall in line with some of their parents' political leanings, its not unlike Alex Keaton in Family Ties - teenage rebelling against his liberal parents.

Some of these kids aren't much different than Young Cappy. I was a member of the Conservative Campus Club at my university (more a red-tory) and before that i was far more blue. These kids can continue to walk through the echo chamber, thinking their worldview at 18 is the correct one (man, they got it all figured out!) or they continue to take an interest in politics and policy and see the world a little bit more grey (or purple) as they start to realize everything is not binary

[TheIronMaiden]

I don't agree with these young men, but I also don't think that their frustrations and anxieties should just be explained away as "they're wrong, we're right, get over it"


Their reaction to the circumstances they face are misguided perhaps, but the sources of their frustrations are not imaginary.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden

I don't agree with these young men, but I also don't think that their frustrations and anxieties should just be explained away as "they're wrong, we're right, get over it"

Their reaction to the circumstances they face are misguided perhaps, but the sources of their frustrations are not imaginary.

Well a lot of them are imaginary and made up by misery profiteers like Jordan. That's not to say they don't have real issues. I mean, come on, they are young people. Every young person has grievances and issues. But they should be addressed in ways that help everyone, not push others who have their own struggles down.



Alternatively, we can keep working towards making the rich richer and letting everyone else fight each other for the scraps and manufacturing culture wars so no one tackles the real issue. Oh...

[Ben_in_Canada]

Please don't forget this election their are other choices.

The Canadian Future Party was founded in 2024 based on a love for Canada, a commitment to democracy as the only legitimate form of government, and with science and evidence-based decision-making at the heart of our ideology.
Democracy first and always, public services that deliver tangible benefits, a thriving private sector, and protections for the private lives of Canadians coupled with high expectations for those in public service.
The world has become more unstable over the last ten years but, since January 20, 2025, Canada has faced threats of annexation.
Strengthening democracy begins at home. The CFP supports reforms that will simplify our tax system and social programs to make them work better for Canadians.
Immigration is vital to Canada’s economic and social future, and we need an approach that is rooted in fairness, transparency, and planning.
Strategic investments in early childhood education, energy, healthcare, and housing will ensure that every Canadian has the opportunity to thrive.
Canada must enhance partnerships with follow democracies abroad while eliminating interprovincial trade barriers at home, bolstering our global presence while building a stronger, more connected nation.

Full Policy can be found here https://www.thecanadianfutureparty.ca/who-we-are/policy

And Calgary candidates

Paul Godard - Calgary Signal Hill
https://www.thecanadianfutureparty.c...es/paul-godard

Ben Cridland - Calgary McKnight
https://www.thecanadianfutureparty.c...s/ben-cridland

Jeff Marsh - Calgary Confederation
https://www.thecanadianfutureparty.c...tes/jeff-marsh

[Cowboy89]

Originally Posted by Harry Lime

Finding the solution within DEI doesn't seem to work, and the reactionary method of violently dismantling DEI (in the States) seems even worse. The only path forward for young white men seems to be racism.

It's a problem built by good intentions, but it's getting worse.

The goals of DEI programs are aspirational and are well intentioned. Who could argue that we all should be actively attempting to dismantle barriers for people to achieve their full potential?

In practice though it seems that the KPI's that are used to measure 'success' in this space are essentially multiple variations of how much non-male and non-white people get hired and promoted rather than attempt to identify people of all races and genders who are attempting to rise above the adversity of their individual situations. The KPIs only work in applications where 'maleness' and 'whiteness' are well correlated with unearned advantage. In the under 30 demo where woman have achieved higher levels of education and now out earn men, it's not hard to see where there's some disaffected men wondering why there still needs to be programs in place that have KPIs designed to structurally exclude them.

[Fuzz]

Ben, you need a Calgary Nose Hill candidate for me!

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Cowboy89

The goals of DEI programs are aspirational and are well intentioned. Who could argue that we all should be actively attempting to dismantle barriers for people to achieve their full potential?

In practice though it seems that the KPI's that are used to measure 'success' in this space are essentially multiple variations of how much non-male and non-white people get hired and promoted rather than attempt to identify people of all races and genders who are attempting to rise above the adversity of their individual situations. The KPIs only work in applications where 'maleness' and 'whiteness' are well correlated with unearned advantage. In the under 30 demo where woman have achieved higher levels of education and now out earn men, it's not hard to see where there's some disaffected men wondering why there still needs to be programs in place that have KPIs designed to structurally exclude them.

And does anyone advocate for making adjustments, or do they all just despise it?

[indes]

At the end of the day while empathy and attention are not zero-sum games, outcomes are. There are only so many jobs and university enrollment spaces available. If you're a white male and the only rhetoric you've heard since you were in grade school is that we need to get more women and more minorities into better jobs and get them more education, you eventually see that you're the one on the outside looking in.
I don't think most people are against equal opportunity but when you blow past equal opportunity and still see the championing of DEI initiatives, championing of women in STEM, championing of support for immigrants you're going to end up with a disenfranchised, angry group of people.

It's easy to just cast them aside as privileged and ignorant (news from social media, don't understand DEI). But I don't see any politicians bringing up male suicide being 4x the rate of female suicide, white males suicide rate is 2x other races or white males being responsible for the majority of mass shootings. White men have historically been privileged far above any other group for centuries now, but that doesn't help our young men today and imo should be completely irrelevant to how we approach DEI.

Anyways I've gone way off topic here, so I apologize. As someone with two very young white boys I honestly worry what the world is going to look like for them and their mental health outcomes.

https://www.brgeneral.org/news-blog/...-most-at-risk-

[calgarygeologist]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Companies did it because it was the right thing to do and they recognized their own practices were contributing to inequality, and felt it would be good for the company financially(and it has been proven to be so) and also good socially and for corporate image. In short the benefits were in line with financial goals, and also socially positive. Win win. Plus governments were doing what they do, making companies follow practices that benefit society in general, because corporations are driven by money.

Disagree on the bold, there is strong pressure to get rid of them from the right. You can't ignore that the US government is removing funding, support, and actively punishing companies and countries that have any sort of DEI policy. Did you see how quickly corporations dumped environmental goals when Trump got elected? They mostly had little financial benefit and probably a cost, but had the social good. The decision was simple. DEI getting dumped because they fear losing money, and the brainwashed masses have been convinced DEI policies are bad, so they lost the social benefit too. Corporations sway with the direction of money. Once the government switched from supporting to punishing DEI the change was obvious.


Love that you think striving for equality is overblown. Says a lot about you.

Striving for equality is not overblown but DEI practices are not the right approach. You and I and most of the members here on CP grew up with the ideology that we should strive for equality through a lens that is colour blind and that a person's race/ethnicity should not be a determining factor in their success and available opportunities. We can extend that to other forms such as gender and sexual orientation. What DEI does is the complete opposite and it makes race, gender and sexual orientation the primary focus because someone somewhere says that good companies should have x% of a certain attribute in a given role.

[Duruss]

Originally Posted by Cappy

Macleans just did an article on young conservative voters and it points to a lot of the same issues/factors

https://macleans.ca/longforms/the-ri...rvative-youth/

Generally raised in "conservative" households (whether or not political) a few children of business owners. Most of their news comes from online sources (tiktok) and even a few mentions for Natpo and other Postmedia rags.

Many of the gripes are common and over all basic understanding of economics/policy.
- cost of living is high.
- taxes are bad.
- immigration is too high.
- free speech!

Most of these voters would have grown up in a Justin Trudeau Canada and a Donald Trump world. They have only ever known JT as a PM; and are absolutely inundated with MAGA talking points.

One could argue this is the eb and flow of generational politics. These kids see themselves as rebels or outside thinkers to the overall liberal cultural mood of the last 20 years. Although they do seem to fall in line with some of their parents' political leanings, its not unlike Alex Keaton in Family Ties - teenage rebelling against his liberal parents.

Some of these kids aren't much different than Young Cappy. I was a member of the Conservative Campus Club at my university (more a red-tory) and before that i was far more blue. These kids can continue to walk through the echo chamber, thinking their worldview at 18 is the correct one (man, they got it all figured out!) or they continue to take an interest in politics and policy and see the world a little bit more grey (or purple) as they start to realize everything is not binary

Turn the clock back 20 years and there I am voting for Harper. However after 20 years of growth and increasing awareness I wouldn't vote for Harper today, I no longer believe in western alienation and have see how austerity politics only enriches the already wealthy.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

And does anyone advocate for making adjustments, or do they all just despise it?

I think this is a wider problem in general, too many people are going ditch to ditch and those who offer a moderate, balanced approach are increasingly demonized by those advocating for a different ditch.

Look at the carbon tax, for example. Call the original form ditch 1, and complete abolishment ditch 2. Carney’s approach is somewhere in the middle: remove the consumer tax, maintain the industrial tax. And for good reason, not only is the industrial tax required to maintain a lot of trade relationships, but it’s also something provinces, including Alberta (the first to implement it… under a conservative government no less) want to maintain and will continue to maintain regardless of if it’s federally mandated or not. The “other ditch,” which is a full removal, makes less sense than the original ditch. But far right conservatives don’t deal in or understand common sense moderation.

So look at DEI. It’s a good program, and one needed to maintain a lot of business and trade relationships. It’s one measure that is important globally, especially for publicly traded companies, when it comes to making deals and maintaining business relationships. If there are problems with it, what does logical moderation look like that accounts for disparities across all genders and races? The “other ditch,” which is abolishing it entirely, is not a smart answer. Instead of dismantling things and convincing young white men they’re the victims in this story, how do you restructure it to it’s original intent?

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by calgarygeologist

Striving for equality is not overblown but DEI practices are not the right approach. You and I and most of the members here on CP grew up with the ideology that we should strive for equality through a lens that is colour blind and that a person's race/ethnicity should not be a determining factor in their success and available opportunities. We can extend that to other forms such as gender and sexual orientation. What DEI does is the complete opposite and it makes race, gender and sexual orientation the primary focus because someone somewhere says that good companies should have x% of a certain attribute in a given role.

Except in reality, it already was before the concept of DEI was born.

So what’s your solution to address it without addressing it?

[Nancy]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Well a lot of them are imaginary and made up by misery profiteers like Jordan. That's not to say they don't have real issues. I mean, come on, they are young people. Every young person has grievances and issues. But they should be addressed in ways that help everyone, not push others who have their own struggles down.



Alternatively, we can keep working towards making the rich richer and letting everyone else fight each other for the scraps and manufacturing culture wars so no one tackles the real issue. Oh...

I have two adult kids in their early 20s, both a son and a daughter, and I know from discussions that there is a lot of toxic right wing rhetoric being consumed by the men in that age group. They are listeners of Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan.

That said, I think the GenX cohort on this board is out of touch of the realities of this age group. Comments in other threads like "students should be able to earn $20,000 a year and not take student loans" are mind-blowingly out of touch of the both the employment prospects and housing costs this generation faces. Even my very socially liberal and progressive vegan daughter was desparate to see Trudeau gone by the end of last year.

[flamesfever]

As an older person I tend to take a longer view of things. As far as many of the socially progressive issues are concerned, there seems to be pluses and minuses in their application. With our changing world, I see these as societal struggles that will swing from left to right and back again with time, until hopefully society finally gets it right.

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Well a lot of them are imaginary and made up by misery profiteers like Jordan. That's not to say they don't have real issues. I mean, come on, they are young people. Every young person has grievances and issues. But they should be addressed in ways that help everyone, not push others who have their own struggles down.



Alternatively, we can keep working towards making the rich richer and letting everyone else fight each other for the scraps and manufacturing culture wars so no one tackles the real issue. Oh...

I think you're missing the point. Folks like Jordan Peterson are not causal, they are symptomatic.




men are also more likely to abuse drugs, experiencing nearly twice as many overdoses

https://www.canada.ca/en/health-cana...9-summary.html

men are also more likely to experience homelessness

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/...023004-eng.htm


Again, I don't think that this is the fault of the liberal party or progressive initiatives. But certainly, left wing rhetoric is not sympathetic to these realities.

[MarchHare]

Originally Posted by calgarygeologist

What DEI does is the complete opposite and it makes race, gender and sexual orientation the primary focus because someone somewhere says that good companies should have x% of a certain attribute in a given role.

Uh, no.

Contrary to popular belief, DEI policies are not about filling an arbitrary quota nor are they about giving roles to lesser qualified minority candidates over more qualified white male candidates. In fact, it's just the opposite: the purpose of DEI policies is to ensure that more qualified minority candidates are not unfairly passed over in favour of lesser qualified white male candidates due to individual or institutional biases.

In the end, does that mean that fewer white men will be hired/promoted/accepted into university programs/etc.? Maybe, but if someone is losing out to a minority applicant for a limited slot because of the existence of DEI policies, it's because the only reason they would have otherwise been accepted is because of systemic discrimination that would have formerly unfairly elevated them above more qualified minority candidates.

Here's a sports example: when Jackie Robinson became the first Black player in Major League Baseball in 1947, he opened the floodgates to many more Black players earning spots on MLB rosters over the next decade as the league became racially integrated. As a result of this, many white players lost their jobs or were demoted to the minor leagues. But here's the thing: those white players were not good enough to be MLB players anyway and the only reason they had a roster spot in the big leagues was because of discriminatory systemic racism in baseball that unfairly barred more qualified Black players. The best white players had nothing to fear. Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio and Warren Spahn and Mickey Mantle all kept their jobs because they earned their roster spots through performance, not systemic biases, but some scrub white player who could barely hit above .200 and had suspect defensive skills was replaced by a better Black player...and that's the way it should be.

That's exactly what DEI policies are about: they're not about taking away positions from more qualified white men, they're about making sure more qualified minority candidates aren't passed over for unfair, biased reasons.

[rubecube]

Are the people that dislike DEI also concerned about the questions on those surveys regarding military service and disabilities, or is it just the ones about minority status based on colour, gender, and sexual orientation? Asking for a friend.

[Cowboy89]

Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden

Again, I don't think that this is the fault of the liberal party or progressive initiatives. But certainly, left wing rhetoric is not sympathetic to these realities.

There isn't a political home in the left or center left for many men. A big reason Trump won in this US in November is that the democrats omit even trying to gain their vote. If you explicitly call out 'serving' groups who total almost 70% of the populace are you really 'serving' all those groups or are you really just excluding the primary group that makes up the remaining 30%?

https://democrats.org/who-we-are/who-we-serve/

Trump mobilized this group into a devoted voter block by bombarding them with online toxic propaganda selling them the world's #1 intoxicant, victimhood, and turned them from non-voter to voter.

[bizaro86]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

Uh, no.

Contrary to popular belief, DEI policies are not about filling an arbitrary quota nor are they about giving roles to lesser qualified minority candidates over more qualified white male candidates. In fact, it's just the opposite: the purpose of DEI policies is to ensure that more qualified minority candidates are not unfairly passed over in favour of lesser qualified white male candidates due to individual or institutional biases.

In the end, does that mean that fewer white men will be hired/promoted/accepted into university programs/etc.? Maybe, but if someone is losing out to a minority applicant for a limited slot because of the existence of DEI policies, it's because the only reason they would have otherwise been accepted is because of systemic discrimination that would have formerly unfairly elevated them above more qualified minority candidates.

Here's a sports example: when Jackie Robinson became the first Black player in Major League Baseball in 1947, he opened the floodgates to many more Black players earning spots on MLB rosters over the next decade as the league became racially integrated. As a result of this, many white players lost their jobs or were demoted to the minor leagues. But here's the thing: those white players were not good enough to be MLB players anyway and the only reason they had a roster spot in the big leagues was because of discriminatory systemic racism in baseball that unfairly barred more qualified Black players. The best white players had nothing to fear. Ted Williams and Joe DiMaggio and Warren Spahn and Mickey Mantle all kept their jobs because they earned their roster spots through performance, not systemic biases, but some scrub white player who could barely hit above .200 and had suspect defensive skills was replaced by a better Black player...and that's the way it should be.

That's exactly what DEI policies are about: they're not about taking away positions from more qualified white men, they're about making sure more qualified minority candidates aren't passed over for unfair, biased reasons.

Right. But since its hard to measure systemic bias, the KPI for DEI programs is almost always representation. And logically most things should have roughly equal splits between men and women, with races represented in equal proportion to their representation in the wider population. That's how it should end up with no systemic bias.

The issue with that is, unlike baseball, there aren't very good objective statistical measures of most employees performance. And the turnaround time for existing employees isn't very fast. So you end up with a bunch of old white male boomers hanging on to positions in many organizations, and since that generation wasn't equal at all to make the overall numbers equal you end up overcompensating at the Gen-Z hire level if you want to show progress.

And a Gen-Z male isn't going to think some old white guy hanging on to his middle management job benefits him in any way, he's just going to see the women he knows that have way better outcomes than the men and wonder why society is still pushing that.

I love a good baseball analogy, and basically the situation is those pre-Jackie Robinson white scrubs are hanging on to their jobs and then since life is mostly NOT like moneyball to make things balance you need to tip the scales against the younger white males. Lots of old Boomers batting below the Mendoza line but still hanging around.

[indes]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

I think this is a wider problem in general, too many people are going ditch to ditch and those who offer a moderate, balanced approach are increasingly demonized by those advocating for a different ditch.

Look at the carbon tax, for example. Call the original form ditch 1, and complete abolishment ditch 2. Carney’s approach is somewhere in the middle: remove the consumer tax, maintain the industrial tax. And for good reason, not only is the industrial tax required to maintain a lot of trade relationships, but it’s also something provinces, including Alberta (the first to implement it… under a conservative government no less) want to maintain and will continue to maintain regardless of if it’s federally mandated or not. The “other ditch,” which is a full removal, makes less sense than the original ditch. But far right conservatives don’t deal in or understand common sense moderation.

So look at DEI. It’s a good program, and one needed to maintain a lot of business and trade relationships. It’s one measure that is important globally, especially for publicly traded companies, when it comes to making deals and maintaining business relationships. If there are problems with it, what does logical moderation look like that accounts for disparities across all genders and races? The “other ditch,” which is abolishing it entirely, is not a smart answer. Instead of dismantling things and convincing young white men they’re the victims in this story, how do you restructure it to it’s original intent?

Agreed on the carbon tax but then the left is in the same boat when it comes to DEI. If DEI was actually about equal opportunity and not equal outcomes, then how come the abolishment of it is considered xenophobic and an attack on women/minorities? IMO the DEI initiatives are the same as the female higher education initiatives, they worked, but what's the end goal? If DEI was abolished, would we just see a mass firing of women/POCs that are crushing their jobs? I guess for me I'm just not sure DEI actually achieves equal opportunity, it seems to just guarantee equal outcomes based on demographics.