Canadian Federal Politics Thread v5

[b1crunch]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Exactly. You don’t have to go looking for this stuff to find it. Especially if you spend any time in left-leaning media and culture spaces. I read the Guardian daily, and you’d be hard-pressed to find any subject or activity - dancing, cooking, gardening, cycling - that hasn’t been interrogated for its patriarchal and colonialist oppression.

Okay, so what's the issue then? Society shouldn't promote fairness? Or is it how we determine fairness? Like with your orchestra example, is the point that you're making that the best people should rise to the top regardless of other factors?

[Roughneck]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

In fairness, he does have a plan:

1 Require municipal governments of “severely unaffordable” big cities to increase homebuilding by 15% annually or have a portion of their federal funding withheld (municipalities with less than 500,000 people will be completely exempt) and bring in penalties for big city governments—those with over a half-million people—for egregious cases of NIMBYism and gatekeeping
2 Grant municipalities $10,000 per home on all growth in their home building, paid out only after the units are built and occupied.
3 Require municipalities seeking federal funds for major transit projects to pre-approve building permits for high-density housing and employment on all available land around stations.
4 Sell sell off 15% of the federal government’s 37,000 buildings with covenants requiring they become affordable housing.
5 Prevent the federal government from creating cash to fund government deficits. That will end the inflationary bubbles that the central bank has helped to create in the housing market.

https://www.pierre4pm.ca/poilievre_w...nd_build_homes

I wanted to reply to this one somply because the CPC throwing something out there is more an acknoledgement of the housing file than the Liberals have been dealing with it, but I also hate it because it's a complex issue that needs more than vague, surface level plans.

1 - What defines "severely unaffordable" and what are 'egregious cases of NIMBYism and gatekeeping'? NIMBYism is absolutely a problem in cities, but how would you define it? And what kind of penalties? Withholding gas tax transfers? I suspect this would be a threat without a lot of teeth. This is something that does identify a problem with housing availability, but offers nothing of substance in actually dealing with it. The vagueness of "severely unaffordable big cities" also makes it so potentially narrow in scope to be ultimately useless on any effective level. To deal with the housing supply issue it's a national issue across lots of cities, not just Toronto and Vancouver. This could be a good approach so long as it becomes broader to more cities, and we know what NIMBYism they're talking about and the penalties are actually, you know, penal.
This is also an example of major federal overreach into provincial jusrisdiction, but I only bring that up because the main base of CPC support seems to think provincial jurisdiction is a big deal. Go after the provinces that allow bad management of their portfolios instead of trying to focs on individual cities.

2- Okay, great. Calgary typically has ~10,000 housing starts a year. So a nice $100M+ from the federal government each year. Toronto would get a nice $360M. Does it apply to all units? Get $10K for a secondary suite perhaps? I say go even more direct and give $1M for each building with a parking maximum to encourage more affordable higher-density developments. Doesn't seem to go along with the whole 'cut inflationary spending' bit but money talks I would love to see the transfer of billions from the feds to municipalities. Where's the money for this going to come from?

3 - This does at least acknowledge an issue, but also misses the mark. Also another example of federal overreach into provincial jurisdiction, but again, whatever. How does one pre-approve a building permit? How is it a smart idea to pre-approve something when you don't even know what it is? How is 'pre-approval of a building provided it meets code' functionally different than 'approving a building that meets code'? It tackles the delays in the wrong spots.
But it also comes up short by being tied to "major transit projects" and gives the impression that cities aren't really trying to push TODs in the first place. And it isn't like the 'unaffordable cities' can't build TODs enough. Vancouver is struggling because the development around Cnaada Line stops has pushed the line to capacity. Land in the GTA is selling for hundreds of millions and billions of dollars in anticipation of transit projects. This isn't where the problems lie. In Calgary it's not so much the desire, but the demand. Transit isn't flexible enough to make a transit-based lifestyle appealing for enough people outside of the inner city. Living a car-free life in the Beltline or Sunnyside is pretty easy. But becomes very restrictive if I wanted to move into an Anderson Station or Westbrook TOD because it effectively ties me to less than ideal transit options beyond one LRT line. How about more transit funding in general so that more broad development options become available? Something stable and predictable that cities can use for long term planning. $10,000 per home is fine and dandy, but a per capita federal transfer tied to mass and active transit funding would go a tremendous way to encoruage more general transit use which would help make TODs around major transit hubs much more attractive for major development in the first place. Toronto and Calgary can do some big things with transit if they knew they had a consistent stream of $360M and $100M respectively for transit projects.



4 - An idea that probably sounds good (big number of government buildings, that's a lot of bloat!) but really doesn't hold up with even a curosry look. When a federal building consitutes everything from Parliament to the shack at a national park entrance, the idea of what 15% of the buildings are becomes less hopeful at being a real thing to actually increase housing supply. For $36K you can buy a federal government property in Rankin Inlet for example. There is a building in Red Deer currently for sale that would be better to demolish and have a much bigger mixed-use building built on it than tying the sale to any sort of conversion which is expensive. So much so even old once considered prime commercial space isn't economically feasible for residential coversion, much less an old federal building.
5 - So make less money available, which would include money available for major high-density building projects and home builds? I don't get this one beyond the crypto-bro dog whistling.


Ultimately what the federal government is best in a position to do is provide the money to build a lot of housing in a short amount of time. Doing that without contributing to 'inflationary spending' is the tricky bit, but leaving this in the hands of private developers will only lead to smaller, incremental growth because there's only so much exposure developers can have in the market while also being wary of the effect they can have on the inflationary construciton spending as well.

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by b1crunch

Okay, so what's the issue then? Society shouldn't promote fairness? Or is it how we determine fairness? Like with your orchestra example, is the point that your making that the best people should rise to the top regardless of other factors?

My point is people have different notions of what constitutes fairness. In a pluralistic society everyone is welcome to advocate for their preferred policies. But we go down a dangerous road when we demand conformity on anything to do with identity or equality.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by b1crunch

What does that look like though? Are the white actors in black face? Because that's obviously wrong. On the other hand, lets say someone does a remake of a show that previously had black actors.... Bad Boys with Will Smith... and they wanted to do it with actors of a different ethnicity instead. Then, yea, that's okay. Why wouldn't it be?

Well, if they did remake bad boys with white actors, first of all, there would absolutely be outrage. But to answer your question about "what does that look like", here is one of a number of examples of controversy about that very thing.

https://ew.com/movies/kevin-feige-ti...e-controversy/

But to answer your question about why it wouldn't be okay, I think it's fine for pretty much the same reasons I don't care about the little mermaid example. I don't think it's worth caring about either of them, but a lot of people do, whether they're on the social justice side of the issue or they're criticizing that social justice side.

Originally Posted by b1crunch

I don't consider myself a "social justice warrior" or anything. Just carrying on a thought experiment here with you, but I'd suppose that of course social justice is all encompassing. Social justice is literally concerned with fairness in society, so people who are proponents of justice in society would want to see it everywhere.

Absolutely - if you're an adherent of this ideology, absolutely you would, and you see social injustice to be righted everywhere in society and want to tackle all of it. But you also should understand that that lens isn't everyone's lens, and others either don't see what you're seeing, or see some examples of what you think is a horrible injustice as not being important, or see some examples of what you think as not being unjust. To a lot of those people, your mission to see what you believe is justice implemented everywhere in society is really no different than a born again Christian who wants to talk to everyone about accepting Jesus as their personal saviour - in the view of that born-again Christian, their mission is equally important, and equally righteous as yours in terms of doing good in the world. And it annoys the absolute #### out of a lot of people, even if you might agree with them about, for example, helping feed and house the homeless.

And often, the reaction to people who don't share your view of the world (or in some cases, even if they don't feel it's a primary concern of theirs that guides their daily life) is either "well, you're just privileged, that's why you think that way", up to, "well, you're just upset you can't use the racial slurs you used to enjoy", as was previously flippantly suggested earlier. That's highly obnoxious behaviour.

[b1crunch]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

My point is people have different notions of what constitutes fairness. In a pluralistic society everyone is welcome to advocate for their preferred policies. But we go down a dangerous road when we demand conformity on anything to do with identity or equality.

I can agree with the conformity bit. For instance, I wouldn't support the idea that ALL orchestras have to use ethnic background in their hiring practices. But I would support the idea that if an orchestra deemed it an important than that is their freedom of choice to do that. Organizations, whether it be orchestras, or movie studios, or whatever should be free to hire people based on the parameters of their choice. If they choose to have a certain representation from specifics groups, than so be it. That's their choice.

With that said I think government organizations like think police forces/teachers/etc should have some parameters in place to ensure equal representation. For example, I think (as a teacher) there needs to be more men represented in the elementary grades of schools. There's pretty solid evidence that more men as teachers in the elementary grades would benefit young boys and their academic achievement.

I don't understand the issue with society being self-reflective and judging its past to determine a better future. We should literally all be doing this in our own personal lives anyways.

I think this is the problem with the word 'woke' and many of the people who use it. It doesn't differentiate between someone demanding conformity in social fairness in unreasonable terms and someone who is seeking a more just society. Those are two completely different things and its gets tough went people equate them as the same.

[AltaGuy]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Exactly. You don’t have to go looking for this stuff to find it. Especially if you spend any time in left-leaning media and culture spaces. I read the Guardian daily, and you’d be hard-pressed to find any subject or activity - dancing, cooking, gardening, cycling - that hasn’t been interrogated for its patriarchal and colonialist oppression.

That seems like only a good thing to me. Mocking and dismissing (which you just did) interrogations of such things is disingenuous and intellectually lazy. "Ah, that old <woke> <regressive> <commie> BS!"

Prescribing policy or social change based on the "findings" merits discussion and argument; for instance, I would wager that the orchestra example would have valid arguments both for and against in most peoples' eyes, and depends on the specifics of a case. But to dismiss out of hand is dumb.

[Fuzz]

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2072226371806

Pierre holding a news conference in 24 minutes.

[lambeburger]

Originally Posted by KootenayFlamesFan

I don’t blame PP for taking a picture with someone at one of his rallies. He doesn’t know everybody’s backgrounds.

The question is why do far right types go to his rallies, support him, take pictures with him?

Extremists will try to increase their profile anyway they can. "Trolling" a politician by getting a picture taken with them and letting a social media storm brew is an easy way to do it.

Trudeau (unknowingly) signed a Nazi flag a while back. Nobody serious accused Trudeau of being a Nazi sympathizer or having the support of Nazis because it was obviously a stunt. Perhaps the same courtesy should be extended to Pierre Poilievre if we want to be fair.

[TorqueDog]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

And yeah, I think it seemed pretty obvious that there was a deliberate choice about wanting a black little mermaid. I think that's actually great if the point was to have girls who look like that actress see themselves as a Disney princess. Couldn't care less. I think it was actually a lot about press and money, though, obviously. Meh. Whatever. Who cares.

You don't care. I don't care.

But my wife cares. Ariel in The Little Mermaid was the Disney character that she most identified with as a little girl because she's a redhead too. Redheads make up all of ~2-6% of the world's population, making them a smaller minority than a lot of demographics you'd typically see regarded as minorities. The whole argument about wanting to have little girls look at actresses and see someone who look like them is perfectly sound, but I can understand the frustration from people who have a connection with a beloved character seeing it changed especially when -- on its face -- the motivations appear to be as you suspect; money and press.

Hollywood is getting lazy as hell as it is, do it by making a new IP. Black Panther is a great example of doing exactly that.

[b1crunch]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Well, if they did remake bad boys with white actors, first of all, there would absolutely be outrage. But to answer your question about "what does that look like", here is one of a number of examples of controversy about that very thing.

https://ew.com/movies/kevin-feige-ti...e-controversy/

But to answer your question about why it wouldn't be okay, I think it's fine for pretty much the same reasons I don't care about the little mermaid example. I don't think it's worth caring about either of them, but a lot of people do, whether they're on the social justice side of the issue or they're criticizing that social justice side.

Well, that's ridiculous. I'm thinking of white musical artists who sing/perform music from other ethnic backgrounds. For instance, I'm a huge Bob Dylan fan. He's covered the music of Muddy Waters and performed his own original songs in the style that most often associated with African American artists. I see no problem with it. Why would I? It's art. Art is open to interpretation and change.

[b1crunch]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Absolutely - if you're an adherent of this ideology, absolutely you would, and you see social injustice to be righted everywhere in society and want to tackle all of it. But you also should understand that that lens isn't everyone's lens, and others either don't see what you're seeing, or see some examples of what you think is a horrible injustice as not being important, or see some examples of what you think as not being unjust. To a lot of those people, your mission to see what you believe is justice implemented everywhere in society is really no different than a born again Christian who wants to talk to everyone about accepting Jesus as their personal saviour - in the view of that born-again Christian, their mission is equally important, and equally righteous as yours in terms of doing good in the world. And it annoys the absolute #### out of a lot of people, even if you might agree with them about, for example, helping feed and house the homeless.

And often, the reaction to people who don't share your view of the world (or in some cases, even if they don't feel it's a primary concern of theirs that guides their daily life) is either "well, you're just privileged, that's why you think that way", up to, "well, you're just upset you can't use the racial slurs you used to enjoy", as was previously flippantly suggested earlier. That's highly obnoxious behaviour.

Right but there's a huge difference between someone who is in my face demanding I change my behaviours to suit them versus someone who holds a deeply held belief but keeps it to themselves. I've known quite vocal Christians who are judgmental and others who I didnt know they were religious at all.

I guess my point is, the term "woke" or the view of 'wokeness' doesn't differentiate between the two. It's painting many situations with the same brush, when really they arent. Just because a director wants to hire a black actor doesnt mean its some woke/social justice thing. There's as much danger is labeling everything woke/social justice as there is in people demanding social justice conformity in society.

[bluejays]

Originally Posted by lambeburger

Extremists will try to increase their profile anyway they can. "Trolling" a politician by getting a picture taken with them and letting a social media storm brew is an easy way to do it.

Trudeau (unknowingly) signed a Nazi flag a while back. Nobody serious accused Trudeau of being a Nazi sympathizer or having the support of Nazis because it was obviously a stunt. Perhaps the same courtesy should be extended to Pierre Poilievre if we want to be fair.

Perhaps, but again there’s a reason why many conservative degenerates follow PP and give him his cult following. Highly unlikely a Canadian politician would be a supremacist himself but he certainly doesn’t dispel showing up at these idiot conventions. People like Patrick Brown and others in the Conservative Party didn’t look for cheap votes of confidence with theee individuals.

[Ozy_Flame]

Elvis brought a whole bunch of soul, gospel, and rhythm/blues into his style, including sounds from B.B. King, Arthur Crudup and Rufus Thomas. It would seem white people really had the issues with that during the height of his rising stardom.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by b1crunch

I guess my point is, the term "woke" or the view of 'wokeness' doesn't differentiate between the two. It's painting many situations with the same brush, when really they arent. Just because a director wants to hire a black actor doesnt mean its some woke/social justice thing. There's as much danger is labeling everything woke/social justice as there is in people demanding social justice conformity in society.

This is true, certainly, though it's again unsurprising - everyone paints the opposing ideology with broad strokes and attributes the worst behaviour of anyone vaguely associated with that ideology to everyone involved. Nothing new there... I mean, it was literally the genesis of this conversation, with Pepsi posting about people using woke in place of racial slurs, as if everyone who uses the word "woke" as a negative was a dyed in the wool racist.

[calculoso]

Originally Posted by KootenayFlamesFan

I don’t blame PP for taking a picture with someone at one of his rallies. He doesn’t know everybody’s backgrounds.

I also agree with this part. Politicians will always find a hand to shake, baby to kiss, etc

This is still far different than marching with someone, having a full on conversation, and making sure it is a photo/video opportunity.

Chance occurrence vs planned event. Big difference.

[b1crunch]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

This is true, certainly, though it's again unsurprising - everyone paints the opposing ideology with broad strokes and attributes the worst behaviour of anyone vaguely associated with that ideology to everyone involved. Nothing new there... I mean, it was literally the genesis of this conversation, with Pepsi posting about people using woke in place of racial slurs, as if everyone who uses the word "woke" as a negative was a dyed in the wool racist.

But then you countered him by suggesting there are a bunch of perceived 'woke' things in society. Specifically, that hiring practices on movies/shows are driven by some need for social justice. I think I've tried to argue, that while might be the case, its not a given. And regardless, company's should be free to hire as they see fit. As well, promoting equal representation isn't necessarily a terrible thing. I mean, lots of actors used to smoke in movies in the 70s and 80s and now rarely any do. Is this some grand scheme of social engineering by the movie studios or are they just reflecting the changes in society since then?

Regardless, did your response to Pepsi not swing the pendulum, to some degree, back the other way with what you were arguing?

I will say, I can't take anyone who uses the word 'woke' as a way of addressing people seriously.

[calculoso]

Originally Posted by Roughneck

2- Okay, great. Calgary typically has ~10,000 housing starts a year. So a nice $100M+ from the federal government each year. Toronto would get a nice $360M. Does it apply to all units? Get $10K for a secondary suite perhaps? I say go even more direct and give $1M for each building with a parking maximum to encourage more affordable higher-density developments. Doesn't seem to go along with the whole 'cut inflationary spending' bit but money talks I would love to see the transfer of billions from the feds to municipalities. Where's the money for this going to come from?

At least this $10k would only apply once the unit was occupied. No subsidy for those who buy/build a unit just to flip it.

Of course, the traditional conservative response to this is - won’t this just cause inflation? If the buyer can expect to pay $10k more, won’t it just flow through to the developer? I swear the same thing has been said about most other proposed subsidies, I fail to see how this one will be different other than whose idea it was…

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

I think in practice it ends up being both. The actor is perfectly competent, or sometimes great, but the decision to cast them is made at least partly for ideological reasons. Sometimes someone involved in the production will say so explicitly, I.e. we wanted a diverse cast, and others it's not but seems obvious.

I don't know that it is weak in all cases, but leaving that aside, saying "don't cast black people" is definitely different than saying, "don't make skin colour a primary consideration when casting".

And yeah, I think it seemed pretty obvious that there was a deliberate choice about wanting a black little mermaid. I think that's actually great if the point was to have girls who look like that actress see themselves as a Disney princess. Couldn't care less. I think it was actually a lot about press and money, though, obviously. Meh. Whatever. Who cares.

Let's say skin color was a consideration when casting (in LOTR or Little Mermaid, whatever). What you're saying, intentionally or not, is that these people have an issue when that skin color isn't white. You never hear about wokeness when actors are white, or when other decisions regarding physical attributes come into play (unless it's Jordan Peterson complaining about the girl on Sports Illustrated, which adds to my point).

Woke, in this case, is just a stand-in for "I don't like to look at that" with a racist flavor because nobody actually believes casting a Black person somehow made the writing worse. That's an insane thing to believe and the fact that you're excusing it as "not weak in all cases" is ridiculous. It defies any logic whatsoever.

So you can find it as obnoxious as you'd like, but you've proven the point I made with what I said by offering plainly ridiculous alternative scenarios where these people might be upset. When white people that don't look anything like a white character are cast, it's "bad casting," but when a Black person is cast, it's "woke."

It's a dog whistle. Which was my point. Sorry you were offended that my comment came off a little too broad but you're not being honest if you're pretending it isn't. The majority of people who use it aren't classical liberal academics pining over the days of freedom expression hampered by a passionate yet misguided youth movement around identity. Time to come into the real world.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2072226371806

Pierre holding a news conference in 24 minutes.

Well that was pointless. Justinflation stupid Liberal heckler Justinflation no new taxes Justinflation Justinflation Justinflation. There, I saved everyone some suffering.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by b1crunch

But then you countered him by suggesting there are a bunch of perceived 'woke' things in society. Specifically, that hiring practices on movies/shows are driven by some need for social justice.

I did, because in many cases they very clearly are. I'm not sure how to convince someone that this is a thing, because it seems really obvious.

I think I've tried to argue, that while might be the case, its not a given. And regardless, company's should be free to hire as they see fit.

Which is fine by me, but as I pointed out, the people complaining about "wokeness" and the allegedly "woke" people they're upset at seem to agree that casting and hiring choices are worth getting really worked up about, so this may be a minority opinion, at least as far as loud people on the internet go (I doubt it's a minority opinion in reality).

As well, promoting equal representation isn't necessarily a terrible thing. I mean, lots of actors used to smoke in movies in the 70s and 80s and now rarely any do. Is this some grand scheme of social engineering by the movie studios or are they just reflecting the changes in society since then?

I don't think these two concepts are really linked, but I agree promoting equal representations isn't a bad thing, especially when the stakes are as low as "who plays Ariel in a movie". I think the decline in smoking in movies has something to do with a broad cultural change and something to do with money - you also don't see a lot of cigarette ads on TV nowadays.

Regardless, did your response to Pepsi not swing the pendulum, to some degree, back the other way with what you were arguing?

I don't know what you mean by this. I don't think everyone who thinks social justice issues are important foams at the mouth or tries to foist their viewpoint on everyone else, if that's what you're suggesting. But the people who do act that way are highly annoying and occasionally successful in implementing their vision.

I will say, I can't take anyone who uses the word 'woke' as a way of addressing people seriously.

It gets a wince from me, too, but as I mentioned, the same is true of the word "problematic".