Let's not kid ourselves: the election results show Canada is in great danger
Let's not kid ourselves: the election results show Canada is in great danger - Halifax Examiner
we got in this morass because the neoliberal state and its accompanying economy financialized every damn thing
The problem is monetary policy, not deregulation. Deregulation of zoning and housing policy would actually prevent monetary policy from creating such a large housing bubble.
Our Bank of Canada targets a 2% inflation, which means prices need to continuously rise as technology actively reduces goods prices, and we then exclude investments and housing appreciation entirely, and we do hedonic adjustments to discount goods inflation. Then there's likely an element of shrinkflation, as company find tricks to cheapen products or degrade services, which lead to no inflation in the CPI but higher profits and then lower prices.
So the money supply needs to grow via low interest rates, in order to provide a windfall to boomers to encourage them sell their real estate holdings, to create new bank loans, to increase the money supply, which turns into aggregate demand, in order to create inflation in the CPI.
But we can't build enough houses due to reverse neo-liberalism, so housing acts as liquidity sponges for cheap debt, and people hold them as investments in perpetuity since they think prices are always going to go up. Also as interest rates fall inflation falls, as interest expense is included in the CPI while housing appreciation is not, its a feedback loop due to its poorly constructed nature. The Bank of Canada now also buys half of all mortgage bonds to attempt to reverse this, so they're actually printing money in order to cause deflation funnily enough, again due to the absurd way the CPI is constructed.
All this would be solved if the left leaders would actually fix affordability. This is the only real reason I see so many voting right. Nobody can afford shit and they blame the left.
Problem is it's not the left's fault. The world is blaming the leaders but it's happening globally. The real problem is a few have all the wealth.
Capitalism, infinite greed and growth and the resulting wealth inequality. Unaffordablity is the inevitable conclusion of late stage capitalism
Our left leaning leaders should update tax laws to address the growing wealth gap. And start building homes so average Canadians can afford a decent home in a decent location.
if the left leaders would actually fix affordability
I'm sorry; it's the sole responsibility of the left? Is their "we'll raise the tide a little and float all the boats" not as glamorous as the right's "first we'll cut taxes, bankrupt medical and transit, and then let someone else take it from there" plan?
That's the key here - the Liberals under Trudeau waited too long to move on affordability, and then they didn't do enough. I hope Carney & co can show quick improvements in housing so the CPC is less attractive.
It would help if we had some left leaders in the first place
If we don't do something about social media, disinformation, and voting reform, we will not have a Canada to protect after the next election.
It will be difficult to impossible to hold onto a country that nearly half the population would freely give away without a fight.
Unfortunately, the call to "do something" about social media will only result in renewed efforts to do the wrong thing, as the previous government attempted. Facebook will be made to behave slightly better at the cost of creating a new regulatory system that reinforces its power and makes Canada legally dangerous for fedi instances or other alternatives.
Go on Mr. Carney, please prove me wrong.
I do agree. Efforts to make things better usually bring out the worst possible defenders of what's wrong with society.
It's so incredibly frustrating.
Unfortunately, due to the piss-poor human condition, Canada - and every country on Earth that allows free speech - will go whatever direction the bots run by the nations that do NOT allow free speech want them to go. Anything else is a temporary reprieve.
Boy, I sure didn't see that coming. It's going to be very interesting seeing where such a path ends. Uncomfortable, likely, but interesting.
Totally. I was thinking about China the other day, how crazy they seemed for building the Great Firewall fifteen years ago. I felt sad for their citizens being cutoff from the internet. Now I'm sitting here looking in and I'm all like - fuck, this has been a major contributor to their sovereignty. Both in that this allowed their own strong digital economy to develop instead of getting hooked on American Big Tech, and in that it keeps the propaganda that's threatening us at bay. I'm not saying that censorship is amazing all around but just like you said, had they gone with free speech online, they'd be subject to whatever Big Social makes money from that day. It's crazy how the tables have turned from this perspective. I'm not optimistic that there's a solution that both keeps speech free and protects us from this problem.
Newspapers aren't allowed to print whatever they want, news networks can't straight up lie on TV, why are we obsessed with the idea that tech platforms need to be able to wash their hands of everything on their platform.
Maybe we don't need the web to be full of user submitted content. I remember the early Internet, it was way better than what we have today.
The Great Firewall of China serves the discussion about American social media media platforms only by providing an example of how things could be even worse.
We have 4 years to get canadians away from Twitter and Facebook to Mastodon and Friendica to reduce the amount of influence the oligarchs have on our comms.
Lets bring back the vote subsidy, limit the contribution limits to $100 a year, lower the voting age to 16 and pass proportional representation!
lower the voting age to 16
I don't agree with this, mostly because that age range is perhaps the most influenced by social media and "misogynist male influencers".
They are too young to know better at that age, and to throw away their future because Joe Rogan or Andrew "The Rapist" Tate manipulated them is just not what this country needs.
But an overhaul of our election system is needed, and laws need to be made that protect people from the barrage of misinformation we are seeing more of every day.
Is this really your experience with +16 years old? If so, you should get your province to invest more in education.
They(16yo) can drive, they can enlist.
In most provinces, they are choosing their career, trade, university, and with fresh knowledge of history and geopolitics they get from schools.
And there is no magical switch that flips when you turn 18. The sooner they start thinking about their future, the better.
Many countries already allowed 16 years old people to vote, for more than 20 years, and they did not become a misogynist hell-hole.
Its a minority government. Four years is optimistic.
The last one lasted pretty long.
I have mixed feelings about Proportional Representation, I'm worried it would lessen the "local candidate" element of the election. I like the concept of voting for a local representative from my area in Parliament, no matter their party affiliation.
Then again, I like the theory behind Ranked Ballots, but unfortunately in practice they tend to just funnel third party votes to the main parties, which is not right either.
I suppose we could go with PR/STV and triple the amount of representatives to still have some sort of local area representative scheme... but that could get expensive and unwieldy very quick.
Could we get rid of the Senate and have two houses? One house small riding FPTP for local area representation, and one house be party based PR by province?
local candidate
I used to think like that, until I realized that I never met the past 3 representatives from my riding. They sent representatives to knock on my door during the campaign saying yes to any issue I brought up, they never hold town halls, and only returned generic messages when we tried to contact them - when they answer.
The person elected this time does not live in my riding.
All of them voted with the party, and never proposed anything useful.
That was one of the questions I had for the candidates knocking this time, would you vote against the party if their decision would harm "us"(the riding)?
Today, I rather vote for anyone (or party/independent list) in Canada that would relate to my expectations. I do not care where they live, only that they do a good job.
Had you not heard of mixed-member proportional rep?
If you really like the local representation that could be for you. The only recent time I can think regional MPs actually coming into play is the heating oil exemption, though.
I have mixed feelings about Proportional Representation, I’m worried it would lessen the “local candidate” element of the election. I like the concept of voting for a local representative from my area in Parliament, no matter their party affiliation.
That is a misnomer as proportional representation is a family of electoral systems. The party-lists is the electoral system that lacks the local representation however Mixed-Member Proportional & Single Transferable Vote both retain it.
I suppose we could go with PR/STV and triple the amount of representatives to still have some sort of local area representative scheme… but that could get expensive and unwieldy very quick.
The elections would cost the same as it would only cost money at first to convert the system from first-past-the-post to the single transferable vote / mixed-member proportional.
I think even worse than voting for fear and resentment, they voted for actual fascism. The guy openly stated that he was going to try to ignore Canadian rights and freedoms without any ambiguity. It's not like him twisting turning Canada into a 3rd world resource economy as a great boost to the economy, or that saving the 1% billions in taxes as a way for the average Canadian to save their money.
One of PP's mandates was to use the notwithstanding clause to bypass Canadian rights and freedoms to jail people without a trial. It was one of his platforms, and there was zero ambiguity that he intended to do it exactly as he stated.
The fact that this wasn't a red flag for over 40% of Canadians and an immediate reason to distance themselves from him, it honestly scares me. Because this is how Hitler and Mussolini came into power, along with many other of history's worst leaders. They sounded reasonable at first, with only one or two shady bits to their mandates, only for those shady bits to be the core that started the greatest evils in the world.
Before the election, I was able to see this multiple poll breakdown that was kind of surprising. If you were under 35 and male, you were more likely to have voted CPC. Every other group (esp. women under 35 and everyone over 65) was more likely to vote LPC. This tells me Poilievre's social media campaign, which you may recall was highly "manosphere"-coded was effective with the target group. The good news then is that (while not making the same mistake as the CPC and forgetting other demographics exist), we can reach these people with a smart approach online.
I think Rational National has a good point in that video I linked that maybe these folks who were taken in by the Conservatives were under the impression because the Liberals were in charge as long as they can remember, everything is solely their fault. They're likely missing the overall historical context that we can't afford to keep the tax burden on poor people (especially as wages stagnate) instead of the rich (whose incomes have been exploding up until Trump's market crashes) as we've been doing increasingly for decades upon decades.
If people didn't get their butts out to vote, we'd have a conservative government right now.
There's been a huge increase in U.S. influenced right-wing extremism in Canada and it contributed to the increase in conservative seats in gouvernent.
Don't kid yourselves. Just because P.P. didn't get elected or the Conservatives didn't get a majority, it doesn't mean there isn't a rise of right-wing extremism in Canada.
@Sunshine Welcome to my blocklist.