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2022 CPC Leadership Discussion: Et tu Redeux

So the woman I referenced above actually had her story published on CBC. Reading it in detail, its way worse and more frustrating that I though. Reading this actually made my blood boil:

The sheer incompetence is amazing.

Denying something based on day format. wow. This country deserves to burn and she's better off in Australia.

Another one of those "gatekeepers" PP keeps talking about.
 
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So @Remius , WHO today, here and now is the party that is most fit to lead?
I think part of the problem that many people have when debating "who should lead the country" is the fact that our elected members of parliament perform two overlapping roles. On the one side, they are part of the legislature and make laws, and on the other side, they lead the executive.

You could have a PM who intends to enact laws and policies that you also support, but they are inept nincompoop who couldn't lead ants up a dead dog's ass. Conversely, you could have a PM who is a natural born leader, would we drive the executive/PMO, ensure that it is run efficiently and ethically, be a stern figure representing Canada on the world stage, etc... BUT, is of a political leaning such that you are highly opposed to his parties plan for new laws an policies.

Which one would you prefer?
 
So the woman I referenced above actually had her story published on CBC. Reading it in detail, its way worse and more frustrating that I though. Reading this actually made my blood boil:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-doctor-struggle-to-get-licensed-1.6890254
On the other side of the coin, both of my last two Canadian born GPs were sanctioned by the CPSO. The first one stepped down following the sanction and and their replacement is working under a restricted license and cannot provide me with the full spectrum of care I require. I now go to a walk-in clinic.
 
Once again: in order to change direction on a hot-button social issue (eg. SSM, abortion), a parliamentary majority of social conservatives would be required. Not a parliamentary majority of CPC; a majority of social conservatives (who could be of any party affiliation, but obviously would almost entirely be a subset of CPC members).

There are not enough socially conservative ridings in Canada to elect a majority of social conservatives. If the CPC wins a majority, many of the members will be - of their own belief, or in alignment with the voters of their ridings - not socially conservative. The fear of something being overturned is irrational; the factor is irrelevant.

People can keep skewing their estimates of how to vote by including an irrelevant factor, but it's not far from believing in monsters under the bed.

The CPC "policy" just has to be what it has been - the party (as government) will not introduce bills on these matters, and will also not prevent private members from tilting at windmills. People angry at them for permitting forbidden topics in Parliament will just have to vote for the parties who will continue to increase spending in order to implement new programs which come at the expense of fixing existing programs, resulting in more queues of people lined up to receive their theoretical entitlements. Pay your taxes; wait in line for your family doctor and an open daycare slot; whinge about inflation and home prices.
 
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Sorry to disappoint you, but this happens quite often with other MSM and small market media outlets airing stories which place employers in a bad light. Not just the CBC.

Occasionally, the opposite happens as well, when the media breaks a "person hard done by the system" story only to later discover the "victim" misrepresented the facts and the employer was right.

Good for her, nonetheless.
 
I didn’t like Brown (too Beijing friendly for me) but there was something dodgy about this whole episode from the start.
 
A poor choice of venue

The Liberals wanted to beat Pierre Poilievre in the House of Commons. No such luck - Paul Wells - 21 Aug​

On Pierre Poilievre’s first day as leader of the Opposition, eleven months ago, the Liberals’ best available minister sought to frame the battle ahead.
“We are going to see two competing visions over the course of this session,” Randy Boissonnault said, largely ignoring Poilievre’s first question.
“The first is our government's plan to support Canadians and those who need it most. The second is that of the Conservative Party and members of Parliament who would leave Canadians to their own devices.”

Boissonnault’s answer struck me at the time as the best available information about the Trudeau Liberals’ plan for Poilievre. It’s worth revisiting.
At the time, late in September 2022, Poilievre had won a resounding victory over the rest of the Conservative leadership field. The Trudeau government had an opportunity to influence votes’ perceptions of the Liberals’ latest opponent. Many observers assumed the Liberals would do this through some sort of ad campaign, as Stephen Harper had done against Paul Martin, Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff, and tried to do against Trudeau, always well ahead of an election.

Boissonnault was announcing the Liberals wouldn’t do this. The main parties’ “two competing visions” would become clear throughout “this session,” in the venue where life is divided into sessions: Parliament. (My procedure-wonk friends will remind me that a “session” isn’t a school year, it’s the space between a Throne Speech and a prorogation or dissolution. Still, a year is a good time for an interim check-in, and plainly things are happening.)

I’m going to say it hasn’t gone well for the Liberals. A stack of polls tells me so, but we don’t only need polls. The Cabinet has gathered in Charlottetown to hear from an academic who calls the state of housing in Canada “a crisis.” Meanwhile the guy who ran economic policy for Justin Trudeau’s government for seven years is calling affordable housing “the urgent economic need of today.” Imagine how many urgent economic needs we’ve heard about since 2015.

Maybe the urgent economic need all along was to resist the urge to treat every need as urgent. Anyway the Liberals expected they could govern by picking issues that would work to their advantage. Instead an issue has been picked for them.

Poilievre made no secret of his own plan to use housing shortages to illustrate “two competing visions.” Every time he stood that day he repeated that housing prices had doubled under Trudeau. Boissonnault’s response was, in some cases, to ignore the question (“Mr. Speaker, let us talk about how people can pay their bills with our new dental plan”) and in others, to mention the day’s latest government policy: a one-time top-up to the Canada Housing Benefit, which would be worth $500 for people whose family income was under $35,000. The top-up began two months after Boissonnault spoke and ended three months after that, in March of this year. After that, Boissonnault and his colleagues would leave Canadians to their own devices, we might say.

Why has the parliamentary session, as glimpsed since last September, been a bad choice of venue for the Liberals’ narrative of two competing visions? A few reasons.

First, most Canadians ignore Parliament. This trend has accelerated in the last eight years. Partly because the audience for just about any given thing in our society has declined as attention spans fragment. Partly because it’s increasingly obvious that the House of Commons no longer provides even occasional surprise. Stephen Harper and Jean Chrétien used to say surprising things. Not often. But they’d reveal a conversation they’d had, or announce a decision, or cleverly sabotage a question’s intended effect. This crew is earnest and general. Always.

Second, Poilievre likes Parliament more than Trudeau does. Not in the sense that he respects it as an institution. Neither of them does. The whole notion is quaint. But Poilievre looks forward to Question Period, rehearses for it, relishes its limited opportunities. Trudeau, who systematically demotes naysayers, has never believed he should have to put up with any in the middle of his workday.
It’s easy to understand a guy disliking Parliament. But disliking Parliament makes Parliament an odd choice of venue for making any kind of important case.

The third problem with the notion that an ordinary governing year would define Poilievre is that it allowed Poilievre to specialize while the government generalized. Any Canadian government has to manage the normal array of dreary files, the bilateral relationship with the U.S., the post-pandemic recovery, ports and bridges and health transfers and public-sector strikes. Not every day can be a message day, even for a government that tries to make its every act a message. That’s why governing parties often prefer to put the “governing” and “party” parts of their mission under distinct command structures.

It’s often said that in making his campaign team his governing team, Trudeau limited the effectiveness of his government. It’s increasingly clear the problem goes the other way too: How can a Prime Minister’s Office think clearly about politics?

The upshot is that while the Liberals have been fitfully defining their opponent he has been diligently defining them. It has gone better for him than for them. A new poll, by Abacus for the Toronto Star, shows that “more [respondents] think Poilievre is genuine than phoney, strong instead of weak, down to earth instead of elitist.” This will be vexing news for readers who think the Conservative leader is phoney, weak and elitist, but in politics the goal isn’t to believe your own beliefs really hard, it’s to get other people to believe them. Here the Liberals’ problem is much like their problem on housing: It’s as though they just realized they have a job to do.

 
This is a great read in my opinion
Dissatisfaction of a minority too large to be ignored is always troublesome. Contemporary controlling interests will always try very hard to do so, though.

Over 30 years ago, we had "The West wants in."

Now, we have something along the lines of "The workers want back in." The roots began when the progressive/left parties, at some point in the recent past, were essentially captured by people who openly disdain the values and lifestyles of people who were originally the backbone of the left. (People who assume because of my education and employment that I must share their values have said some remarkable things in my presence.)

I doubt we ever had anything matching neo-conservativism (one of the parties to "fusionism") in Canada, because we always lacked the capacity for military intervention. Ironic that it was a movement partially birthed by dissatisfied left-of-centrists.

The social aspect won't go away. If John Adams's view - "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - is correct, I take it to mean that people without self-restraint (religiously motivated or otherwise) will not be able to maintain a stable government without gradual loss of freedoms. Given current trends, we should expect to disintegrate.

At least here movement centrists haven't (yet) had to choose between influencing conservativism from the inside or joining with vehemently opposed political parties to destroy and retake their old troughs. Part of the American conservative establishment chose poorly and almost lacks any influence at all because they shat their credibility.
 

From Paul Wells today. Maisonneuve to run for the Conservatives and the next Defence Minister???

Meet the CPC convention speakers

The last time Michel Maisonneuve gave a big speech, he got a standing ovation and a week’s worth of headlines. The organization that honoured him issued a statement saying he didn’t speak for them. Another group that had asked him to lead its fundraising campaign instead sought and received his resignation. Political scientists who attended the speech called it “really problematic” and “an embarrassment.”

The next time Maisonneuve gives a big speech will be Sept. 7 in Quebec City at the Conservative Party of Canada’s national convention.

The decision to invite Maisonneuve — a retired Canadian Armed Forces Lieutenant-General whose speech accepting the Vimy Award last November provoked considerable controversy — to give a keynote speech at the first Conservative convention under Pierre Poilievre’s leadership is a surprise.
 
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