Canadian Federal Politics Thread v5

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by timun

It's Conservative policy to not have a solid platform, precisely so that they can't get called out on it by critics. You can't criticize their platform if they keep a deliberate haze over it, leaving it open to interpretation and to be amorphous enough that it can be molded with vague platitudes into whatever they need it to be. It's all quite deliberate.

The party's convention is so that leadership can pay lip service to the various factions within the base: nothing more. It "gave the grassroots members of the party a chance to have their voice heard at the national level," they'll say.

Federal parties in Canada typically do not release party platforms until the months leading up to an election. The Conservatives aren’t any different from the Liberals or NDP in that respect.

[timun]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Federal parties in Canada typically do not release party platforms until the months leading up to an election. The Conservatives aren’t any different from the Liberals or NDP in that respect.

Re-reading my post I can see how I implied that it would be customary for a party to have a platform at this point; I didn't mean to do so, and yes you're absolutely right.

That said, what I said about the CPC having a vague platform (come election time), or none at all, still holds true.

[Wormius]

My general point is that it appears that no CPC MPs are interested in helping to solve any of the problems that struggling Canadians are experiencing for another 2 years until an election. Is that a fairly accurate assessment based on everything we have seen since Liberals formed government? Just sit back and do nothing?

[Firebot]

Good morning, it's been a busy weekend on this thread it seems.

Originally Posted by #-3

Can you point to a liberal policy that can be directly linked to the sky high costs. basically of the these problems can be traced back to global macro effects or earlier conservatives policies.

Why does Alberta have the highest energy cost in the country? because of choices Klein made, followed by Kenny deciding to bury his head in the sand pretending we would never have to pay for something during a price surge, rather than dealing with structural problems in the existing programs, so that he would have more time to focus on investigations into anti-Albertan activities.

Why are food costs high? because supply bottlenecks created by covid, wars, droughts, climate change, and increasing standards of living around the developing world. Not exactly problems we pay a prime minister to fix single handedly.

Why are houses so expensive, because of a decades long war against public infrastructure waged by the right, and the rapidly declining ratio of public to private dwellings available.

Summary: Liberals despite being in power for 8 years had no policies that could possibly have impacted prices in any way, yet Ralph Klein, who's been dead for 10 years mind you, is directly responsible for today's energy prices. Also the right is fully to blame for housing prices because of some vague war against public infrastructure.

Correct me if I summarized or read that wrong? Care to elaborate on this war part since it sounds quite serious?

Originally Posted by Wormius

What? So they’re just keeping this a secret for some reason? I’d think if they truly cared about Canadians then maybe they’d share this awesome platform and try somehow to make it happen before an election. My reaction to this is PP, and the party in general, don’t give a flying fata about making things better for Canadians.

Apparently the CPC, which is not in power, seemingly doesn't care about Canadians because they don't have an election platform 2 years ahead. No party generally creates a full platform ahead of elections.

They do have a plan for housing affordability however, which they also put a motion on last parliament session which was voted down by the Liberal-NDP coalition.

https://www.conservative.ca/fire-gat...ld-homes-fast/

https://www.ourcommons.ca/Members/en...309?view=party


Meanwhile the Liberals, currently the party in power who has the power to put a plan right now along with their coalition NDP partners, just did a PEI retreat on the PR pretense of tackling housing affordability and came out of it shrugging their shoulders. But they did enjoy some fine lobster and R&R and it was a great little PR moment for a few days to show they care.

Do you have any comments for the Liberals efforts on housing affordability or tackling cost of living? Regardless of Conservatives plans, surely we shouldn't wait 2 years to get a new plan from our current governing party?

[Yoho]

Good morning right back at you Firebot, and thank you for that Monday morning eye opener post!

[PepsiFree]

Conservative apologists at it again.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Firebot

Good morning, it's been a busy weekend on this thread it seems.

Summary: Liberals despite being in power for 8 years had no policies that could possibly have impacted prices in any way, yet Ralph Klein, who's been dead for 10 years mind you, is directly responsible for today's energy prices. Also the right is fully to blame for housing prices because of some vague war against public infrastructure.

Correct me if I summarized or read that wrong? Care to elaborate on this war part since it sounds quite serious?

Apparently the CPC, which is not in power, seemingly doesn't care about Canadians because they don't have an election platform 2 years ahead. No party generally creates a full platform ahead of elections.

They do have a plan for housing affordability however, which they also put a motion on last parliament session which was voted down by the Liberal-NDP coalition.
https://www.conservative.ca/fire-gat...ld-homes-fast/

https://www.ourcommons.ca/Members/en...309?view=party


Meanwhile the Liberals, currently the party in power who has the power to put a plan right now along with their coalition NDP partners, just did a PEI retreat on the PR pretense of tackling housing affordability and came out of it shrugging their shoulders. But they did enjoy some fine lobster and R&R and it was a great little PR moment for a few days to show they care.

Do you have any comments for the Liberals efforts on housing affordability or tackling cost of living? Regardless of Conservatives plans, surely we shouldn't wait 2 years to get a new plan from our current governing party?

Man, reading that link...how does he expect to do these things? The feds meddling in municipalities?

Impose a NIMBY penalty on big city gatekeepers for egregious cases of NIMBYism. We will empower residents to file complaints about NIMBYism with the federal infrastructure department. When complaints are well-founded, we will withhold infrastructure dollars until municipalities remove the blockage and allow home building to take place.

Is he going to setup a Federal department of NIMBYism to study these complaints at a municipal level?

Sell off 15 percent of the federal government’s 37,000 buildings. We will require these buildings to be turned into affordable housing.

Yes, I'm sure they are all located in excellent places, and the buildings are setup for easy residential conversions...And why 15% Sounds like a nice number, or did you research this?

Stop printing money. We will require every dollar of new spending to be matched by a dollar of savings. This will end the inflationary bubbles the Bank of Canada created, fueling a crisis in the housing market.

This is dumb and every attempt at this leads to failure, because it is dumb. PP's weakness is he thinks there are simple sollutions to complex problems.

[Cappy]

Oh yes, the "Gatekeepers"

City planners, building code inspectors, and just general neighborhood busybodies. Lets tie city funding to getting rid of these unscrupulous people.

Considering the vast majority of gatekeepers are NIMBY home owners who are worried about an incoming rowhouse development using the court system to enforce decades old restrictive covenants, i struggle to see how a city is going to succeed here.

To be fair to Calgary, it is already trying (with intense opposition:

https://globalnews.ca/news/9175283/c...g-development/

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

That's really all Conservatives want. A King. Never have another election because the Conservative option is always the only choice. It's baffling. Do you even want to live in a democracy?

Lol. Liberal partisans are the worst.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by peter12

Lol. Liberal partisans are the worst.

What are you on about, and why do you think I'm a Liberal partisan?

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Wormius

My general point is that it appears that no CPC MPs are interested in helping to solve any of the problems that struggling Canadians are experiencing for another 2 years until an election. Is that a fairly accurate assessment based on everything we have seen since Liberals formed government? Just sit back and do nothing?

That’s pretty much how parliamentary democracy works, yeah. Aside from some work in committees, MPs outside the governing party don’t hold the reins of power. So their role is to criticize. Even backbenchers in the governing party have very little power in our system. The PMO and cabinet ministers are about the only ones in government who can actually get stuff done.

Again, the Conservatives aren’t behaving any differently from how other parties behave in opposition.

[opendoor]

Interesting that there was nothing in the convention or any of their policies about reducing the demand for housing (i.e. lowering immigration numbers). Which is actually sensible, given that we need high immigration for our system to continue to work, but I'm not holding my breath that people on the right will stop talking about immigration as a partisan issue.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by timun

That said, what I said about the CPC having a vague platform (come election time), or none at all, still holds true.

It seems to vary by election, but I always read the three main parties' platforms and my experience has been that it's the NDP that puts out the vague (or downright nonsensical) platforms, not the CPC or LPC, which usually have an acceptable level of detail. Can't recall if that was the case last go-round specifically though.

[CliffFletcher]

The housing crisis goes beyond partisanship. A large swathe of the public - especially young adults - believe our leaders and policy wonks have #### the bed on the single most important economic issue they face.

It’s a complex issue, with lots of causes: low interest rates, aging populations, high material and labour costs, offshore money looking for a save haven, lack of public housing, NIMBYism, high back-door immigration rates.

Partisans emphasize the causes that suit their ideological narratives. But most voters aren’t especially ideological. They just know that the people in charge have left them and their children unable to afford to put a roof over their head. And the people in charge can point fingers at each other all they like, but angry voters are going to exact their pound of flesh.

[Cowboy89]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Interesting that there was nothing in the convention or any of their policies about reducing the demand for housing (i.e. lowering immigration numbers). Which is actually sensible, given that we need high immigration for our system to continue to work, but I'm not holding my breath that people on the right will stop talking about immigration as a partisan issue.

Are we as a people able to have this discussion rationally in the public sphere without resorting to calling people who support policies that would see a reduction in immigration, racist?

The answer to that question probably is telling as to why that was not a feature of this past weekend's convention.

[Ozy_Flame]

The cons 'plan' to provide housing seems rooted in egregious virtue signalling and a veritable buffet for hungry developers to cut corners and circumvent city planners at a time when progressive rethinking of sustainable cities is needed at its most.

'Gatekeepers' is a power word being used far too ideologically here. But then, the PP CPC has adopted it as it's religious mantra.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

It seems to vary by election, but I always read the three main parties' platforms and my experience has been that it's the NDP that puts out the vague (or downright nonsensical) platforms, not the CPC or LPC, which usually have an acceptable level of detail. Can't recall if that was the case last go-round specifically though.

The NDP are infamous for their shadow budgets, which rely on fantastical revenue projections to fund all the goodies they propose to hand out.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by opendoor

Interesting that there was nothing in the convention or any of their policies about reducing the demand for housing (i.e. lowering immigration numbers). Which is actually sensible, given that we need high immigration for our system to continue to work, but I'm not holding my breath that people on the right will stop talking about immigration as a partisan issue.

I think the political challenge is that any immigrants hoping to have family join them in Candaa will take any reduction as an attack on them. It's tough to say you will reduce immigration numbers without this happening, and you will lose immigrant votes for it. Which then also makes it an easy opposition attack point. "Pierre doesn't believe your family should join you in Canada".

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by Cowboy89

Are we as a people able to have this discussion rationally in the public sphere without resorting to calling people who support policies that would see a reduction in immigration, racist?

The answer to that question probably is telling as to why that was not a feature of this past weekend's convention.

No, I don't think that's it at all. If they were that worried about perception and political ammunition, they wouldn't have passed resolutions about trans kids, vaccines, and women's bathrooms.

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Man, reading that link...how does he expect to do these things? The feds meddling in municipalities?

As an aside, I love how quickly the focus went from "Conservatives don't care about Canadians and don't bother to care enough to make a plan" to "Conservatives are so dumb this plan will never work". It took less than 15 min to get multiple posts quickly panning such plan once I linked it (despite it being readily available for fact checking by those so often quick on fact checking).

Meanwhile Liberal party goes knowing that some folks will defend / ignore them regardless of what they do.

In any case, details of the plans may or may not be feasible, but they certainly would have an impact and the federal government does have the ability to implement measures. Whether these measures are constitutional I am sure will come in the future. Philosophical difference in plans is why we have political parties, and can certainly argue on its merits and feasibility but it refutes the claim that the CPC has no plan.

Again though, this is 2 years away at best from even seeing the light of day, as Conservatives are not in power.

What do we do today to tackle the problem short term and long term? Why are a number of posters wanting to get the Opposition party's solution and plan when they are not in power for the next 2 years?