Canadian Federal Election

[travis3000]

Originally Posted by BlackDog204

The advance polling lineups are something that I have never seen in my life. The general consensus seems to be the masses are very pro-Carney. I would not be all that surprised to see the Liberals perform better in the election, than in the polling.

Perhaps as many as 210 seats.

I voted yesterday. I waited 20 minutes in a lineup which was the most I ever have. The lady said over 1000 people voted as of 4pm yesterday at that one polling location alone!

I'm not sure I share your rosy LPC predictions. There is a high desire for change in the electorate after 9.5 years of Liberal rule. Trump scared many Canadians but that fear has worn off as Trump has gone quiet the last 3 weeks. I'm not sure a LPC majority is a guarantee.

Mainstreet has a CPC+2 today, and Frank Graves from Ekos was tweeting last night (now deleted) that the race is tightening again in his data.

[SignalHillHiker]

Originally Posted by travis3000

I'm not sure I share your rosy LPC predictions.

I'm in the same boat. Harper was re-elected, so we're not immune. George W. Bush won a second term, Trump has been elected twice. We're up against a pretty right-wing shift in society.

[Marshsparrow]

What is with this conspiracy over pens instead of pencils and who is raising this fuss? Is it the same group that is saying too big to rig? Has there ever been a case of Elections Canada erasing someones ballot as they are claiming?

Why are they making such a big deal out of this?

[elly63]

Originally Posted by JakeLRS

If you’re going to make a big deal of something that happened in 2002, when both these people were relatively young and likely had a different personality, I don’t know how to help you.

No one does

[elly63]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

We're up against a pretty right-wing shift in society.

Do people actually wonder why this happens. Do they ever think it's because it is a backlash to the excesses of the left.

[SignalHillHiker]

Originally Posted by elly63

Do people actually wonder why this happens. Do they ever think it's because it is a backlash to the excesses of the left.

I understand why people feel left behind, or held back - I just don't see the Canadian (or, especially, American) right wing as being a remedy for that. The left is pretty consistently better for the things right-wing useful idiots claim to care about - especially the economy, and public services in rural areas.

Our society is moving in more or less the same direction whichever party is in power, the only real question to me is how painful for how many people do I want that to be? I'd rather rural areas have postal service than not. I'd rather fewer children and seniors live in poverty. I'd rather public services remain public, as opposed to socializing the risk but privatizing the profits. I'd rather the wealthy be taxed more - i.e., I don't believe there's any moral way to be a billionaire. It should be impossible - wages throughout any business should be rising with its success, not lining the pockets of one person, especially when employees at businesses such as Walmart are subsidized with public spending such as income support, or "food stamps" in the States.

I think you need to buy into cheap slogans, believe demonstrably false misinformation, or have a relatively high baseline of some form of bigotry to fall for right-wing politics in Canada, or the United States. There are more kids in Texas with measles right now than there are trans athletes in that entire country, but they'll fall for the circus entertainment of the latter as though it has some impact on their lives.

"Build the homes", "Axe the tax", etc. - from a career politician who has very little to show for his decades in government (wasn't it one bill he sponsored that got passed?). It just isn't good enough for me, and I believe his policies won't change the direction we're heading, it'll just make that process more painful for more Canadians, while a handful you could comfortably fit around your kitchen table get even more obscenely rich.

And then the social shit is just a non-starter for me. They do SO much damage when they're in power. DFO will never recover from the data they destroyed at their libraries in this province. Harper's muzzling of scientists is still having an effect in the willingness of Canadians to trust their own "research." The United States will never get back the soft power USAID provided, at such a bargain price. Tory times are hard times, as the old folks in my life say.

[savevp]

Originally Posted by Marshsparrow

What is with this conspiracy over pens instead of pencils and who is raising this fuss? Is it the same group that is saying too big to rig? Has there ever been a case of Elections Canada erasing someones ballot as they are claiming?

Why are they making such a big deal out of this?

With all due respect, you created your own conspiracy theory just a couple posts back, suggesting Poilievre was behind the press conference fiasco. And for what it's worth, I have not heard or seen anything about pencils or pens. But I don't trawl reddit and social media for news, which are cesspools of misinformation.

[savevp]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

I understand why people feel left behind, or held back - I just don't see the Canadian (or, especially, American) right wing as being a remedy for that. The left is pretty consistently better for the things right-wing useful idiots claim to care about - especially the economy, and public services in rural areas.

It looks to me like the resurgence in right wing populism across the western world is very much the 'pendulum swinging back' after the last decade's engorgement of the left wing. Relatively inoffensive (to the right wing) economic issues used to be at the core of the left wing movements, and centred largely on the core principles of redistribution of wealth, and government provision of services. There was (and outside the US, still is) a broad consensus on the more inflammatory social issues like gay marriage, abortion, climate change, and vaccines.

In the last decade, the emergence and rapid spread of the 'woke' left - you know it when you see it - has upset the ataraxy of right wingers(who could comfortably inhabit our decisively capitalist, free market society).

What else was going to happen when the prevailing leftist ideology - flowing outward from the States - was predicated on the idea that majority groups are responsible for the world's ills, and should feel guilty for doing so? And with various remedies first proposed, then enacted, that explicitly or implicitly seek revenge against the majority group in question, be it demonising historical figures or demanding reparations. Of course young people, mostly white males - the most vilified group, have turned to right wing populism as a result. What else could possibly have happened?

That said, the relative lack of hard-core wokeism in our country has been met with a notably weak far-right movement too. Although there is something of a tendency, especially among a handful of forumers, to label anyone with conservative views as a Nazi, MAGA, etc., much of the rightward shift among Canadian youth is maybe just a simple reaction to the destruction of their prospects during the last decade of Liberal government. And the most odious and destructive policies of the American right wing are decidedly not in play here. If young men could afford to buy a home in Canada, I don't think we'd be seeing this upwelling of Conservative support; it isn't founded on vaccine scepticism, anti-gay sentiment, Christian ideals, anti-immigrant rhetoric, or general opposition to science, as much as some like to suggest it is.

[harls]

Went back this morning to vote and it took about 10 minutes (around 9:20 ET). A line was starting to form as I left.

[Nouvellecosse]

Originally Posted by savevp

It looks to me like the resurgence in right wing populism across the western world is very much the 'pendulum swinging back' after the last decade's engorgement of the left wing. Relatively inoffensive (to the right wing) economic issues used to be at the core of the left wing movements, and centred largely on the core principles of redistribution of wealth, and government provision of services. There was (and outside the US, still is) a broad consensus on the more inflammatory social issues like gay marriage, abortion, climate change, and vaccines.

In the last decade, the emergence and rapid spread of the 'woke' left - you know it when you see it - has upset the ataraxy of right wingers(who could comfortably inhabit our decisively capitalist, free market society).

What else was going to happen when the prevailing leftist ideology - flowing outward from the States - was predicated on the idea that majority groups are responsible for the world's ills, and should feel guilty for doing so? And with various remedies first proposed, then enacted, that explicitly or implicitly seek revenge against the majority group in question, be it demonising historical figures or demanding reparations. Of course young people, mostly white males - the most vilified group, have turned to right wing populism as a result. What else could possibly have happened?

That said, the relative lack of hard-core wokeism in our country has been met with a notably weak far-right movement too. Although there is something of a tendency, especially among a handful of forumers, to label anyone with conservative views as a Nazi, MAGA, etc., much of the rightward shift among Canadian youth is maybe just a simple reaction to the destruction of their prospects during the last decade of Liberal government. And the most odious and destructive policies of the American right wing are decidedly not in play here. If young men could afford to buy a home in Canada, I don't think we'd be seeing this upwelling of Conservative support; it isn't founded on vaccine scepticism, anti-gay sentiment, Christian ideals, anti-immigrant rhetoric, or general opposition to science, as much as some like to suggest it is.

I don't think it's actually true that there was, "In the last decade, the emergence and rapid spread of the 'woke' left". That was largely just a caricature created by right wing media. It was partly enabled by centrist governments like the LPC using left-sounding language in an attempt to appeal to left wing voters without actually embracing left wing policies which are indeed mainly economic. That was combined with a rapid publicization of such attempts along with the publication the segment of the left who actually did focus on the more divisive social views. Doing that made it seem as if they were the entire, or majority, of the left. The right wing has an enormous media machine geared toward doing just that, particularly in the US with Murdoch type media but also amplified by social media algorithms.

And I think most of the right tends to realize this because when you ask them what they mean when they complain about "wokeness" the responses are a dog's breakfast. Trump called other far-right Republicans woke for not going along with election denialism. People called Target woke for simply having a small section of LGBT-related merchandise in conjunction with pride. They called video games and movies woke for having a black or LGBT character. And it's the same thing with DEI. It's common to hear them call anyone who isn't a straight white male a DEI hire without knowing anything about their credentials. It's particularly bad when it comes to Black people where they basically use DEI to be a more polite sounding alternative to the N word. In other words, these aren't legitimate grievances about the left actually doing something excessive. It's the right being the right and finding novel-sounding ways of opposing anything progressive including the public inclusion of people who were traditionally marginalized.

[savevp]

^
I wouldn't necessarily disagree, but political movements are almost always more about 'vibes' than policy. The Trudeau era definitely embodied the woke vibe. But things like renaming Dundas Square, removing references to Sir J. A. MacD, etc are very real. Even if inconsequential and merely symbolic, these tendencies are impactful, commonplace, and clearly divisive.

Again, we don't have a fraction of the far right v far left dynamic in the states. There's a reason the PPC won't win any seats this election. But there's also a reason so many young mainstream voters have left the Liberal tent despite Poilievre's occasional Trump turns.

[MonctonRad]

Originally Posted by savevp

It looks to me like the resurgence in right wing populism across the western world is very much the 'pendulum swinging back' after the last decade's engorgement of the left wing. Relatively inoffensive (to the right wing) economic issues used to be at the core of the left wing movements, and centred largely on the core principles of redistribution of wealth, and government provision of services. There was (and outside the US, still is) a broad consensus on the more inflammatory social issues like gay marriage, abortion, climate change, and vaccines.

In the last decade, the emergence and rapid spread of the 'woke' left - you know it when you see it - has upset the ataraxy of right wingers(who could comfortably inhabit our decisively capitalist, free market society).

What else was going to happen when the prevailing leftist ideology - flowing outward from the States - was predicated on the idea that majority groups are responsible for the world's ills, and should feel guilty for doing so? And with various remedies first proposed, then enacted, that explicitly or implicitly seek revenge against the majority group in question, be it demonising historical figures or demanding reparations. Of course young people, mostly white males - the most vilified group, have turned to right wing populism as a result. What else could possibly have happened?

That said, the relative lack of hard-core wokeism in our country has been met with a notably weak far-right movement too. Although there is something of a tendency, especially among a handful of forumers, to label anyone with conservative views as a Nazi, MAGA, etc., much of the rightward shift among Canadian youth is maybe just a simple reaction to the destruction of their prospects during the last decade of Liberal government. And the most odious and destructive policies of the American right wing are decidedly not in play here. If young men could afford to buy a home in Canada, I don't think we'd be seeing this upwelling of Conservative support; it isn't founded on vaccine scepticism, anti-gay sentiment, Christian ideals, anti-immigrant rhetoric, or general opposition to science, as much as some like to suggest it is.

A good post. Yes, I agree that the western world shift to the alt-right is absolutely a reaction against the worst excesses of the woke left (drag story hours in public libraries anyone???). No one however is questioning gay marriage or gay adoption anymore. The general movement is still progressive.

When the pendulum starts to swing however, it can swing quite wildly to begin with, and we should do what we can to limit this movement (either to the right or the left).

We should be on guard against Maple MAGAism. We should also acknowledge that Trumpian America is fascist America. Of this, there cannot be any doubt.

It is because of this that Mark Carney is the better choice at this particular point in time. It would be a repudiation to the Maple MAGA extreme, and, Carney is undoubtedly the better qualified individual to deal with Trumpian tariffs and threats.

I say this as a progressive Conservative. Normally, I would have held my nose and voted for PP, but, the woketarian Justin Trudeau is gone, the Liberals are swinging back to the centre, and, other pressing issues have come to the fore. There is a need for a change - we will just have to wait for 2029 for this change to occur.

[casper]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

It is because of this that Mark Carney is the better choice at this particular point in time. It would be a repudiation to the Maple MAGA extreme, and, Carney is undoubtedly the better qualified individual to deal with Trumpian tariffs and threats.

I say this as a progressive Conservative. Normally, I would have held my nose and voted for PP, but, the woketarian Justin Trudeau is gone, the Liberals are swinging back to the centre, and, other pressing issues have come to the fore. There is a need for a change - we will just have to wait for 2029 for this change to occur.

Should we see the outcome that polls are projecting I think it is a strong message that will be sent to the Conservatives. Will they listen and come back in 2029 with a more progressive, environmentally responsible and tolerant version of conservatism? Who knows. They will have four years to figure it out.

I would be surprised to see PP resign as leader. What would he do? It is the only thing he has ever been involved in.

[Taeolas]

Arlene Dickenson posted this on Facebook and it resonated well with me:

Okay. Here goes….

I’m nonpartisan. I vote. I care. I’m proudly Canadian. I will support whoever is elected, because that’s how democracy works. And I will always defend democracy.

But I really need to say this: the people showing up in my feed with the most aggression right now are identifying themselves as Conservatives. Not all but more than enough to notice.

They twist my words. They accuse me of things I haven’t said. They label anything I post to do with fairness, equality, decency or thoughtful voting, as some kind of Liberal agenda.

It’s not. It’s called being Canadian.

This habit of rewriting narratives, of meeting difference with hostility instead of dialogue is a big part of the problem. Not just for the party, but for the country.

You can disagree. You can push back. But if your version of “debate” is to disrespect, demean, or distort, you’re not making a point. You’re proving mine.

I won’t be bullied out of speaking up for what matters to me. And if your instinct is to attack instead of engage, that says more about you than it ever will about me.

I know the left certainly isn't pure, and has its own dehumanizing tactics as well; but overall (and it may just be due to my own beliefs I may not see some of the issues); but I do agree with what she posted; the general stance of many on the right, the way they seem to be trying to dictate what people can do, what they believe and enforce upon others does feel disturbing.

I no I'm not perfect, but I do try to avoid personally attacking others, unless they are directly responsible for what is going on (like the Puppet Felon and Stinky One). If/when I do talk about a group in general, I try to keep it focused on their expressed beliefs and stances and to not be too combative. I'm not perfect but it's something I try to do.

[elly63]

Originally Posted by Taeolas

I know the left certainly isn't pure, and has its own dehumanizing tactics as well; but overall (and it may just be due to my own beliefs I may not see some of the issues

It's this whole forum, it's not hard to miss (few true Liberals, mostly far left). Conservative voices are bullied or threatened with deletion or banning for doing the same thing leftists do. I'm not complaining, it is what it is, but don't be surprised that the right wing does dirty tactics. They learned from the best at manipulating people and media, the left.

[travis3000]

New Liaison Poll
April 16-18th (1500 respondents)

LPC=44
CPC=39

[Wigs]

I think Carney can unify Canadians more than Poilievre. Also as SHH stated, I don't want a PM when his only thing to show for almost 21 years as an MP is one piece of legislation. Too much attack dog, not enough substance. Catchy three word slogans do not run a country.

Carney has had actual important real world jobs and I think would be better at dealing with the Mad King to our South and the current global financial instability from insane trade wars.

I also like my Liberal MP more than the Conservative candidate running (even though I support his craft brewery that he and his son run together ). The NDP candidate is terrible at getting their name and messaging out. (although I vote NDP Provincially because I really like my MPP and thinks he does his job well, cares about his constituents and pushes back against the corrupt DoFo administration).

[Marshsparrow]

Originally Posted by savevp

With all due respect, you created your own conspiracy theory just a couple posts back, suggesting Poilievre was behind the press conference fiasco. And for what it's worth, I have not heard or seen anything about pencils or pens. But I don't trawl reddit and social media for news, which are cesspools of misinformation.

If you believe that Elections Canada and their social media feed is a cesspool of information who is out with a fact sheet on the subject TODAY because of what people are claiming... sure, that says lots about you.

[Marshsparrow]

Originally Posted by casper

Should we see the outcome that polls are projecting I think it is a strong message that will be sent to the Conservatives. Will they listen and come back in 2029 with a more progressive, environmentally responsible and tolerant version of conservatism? Who knows. They will have four years to figure it out.

I would be surprised to see PP resign as leader. What would he do? It is the only thing he has ever been involved in.

I think after 20 years as a career politician and 2+ years of campaigning - if he does not keep Liberals to a minority which means he blew a 25% lead and spent millions - he and Jenni both need to be FIRED.

[Marty_Mcfly]

I'll wait until election day to cast my vote, but I will be voting Conservative. Not that I am a Conservative, I am a swing voter who has voted for all of the three major parties, and generally consider myself someone who is right around that centre line.

My reason is simple. When I look back on the last decade I ask myself whether or not life is any easier or better than it was in 2015. Unfortunately, my answer to those questions is no. Some (but not all) of these problems are related to policies of the Liberal government. I fully acknowledge that someone may ask themselves those same questions and the answer may be yes, which is awesome. Unfortunately, some folks will always struggle more than others.

Many people turn around and say "The conservatives are going to make these problems even worse", and fuck maybe they will, who knows. The only thing I know is when something isn't working for you, it'd be crazy to try and do the same thing again. Maybe the alternative doesn't work either, but I'm going to vote for trying the alternative. The nice thing about a free democracy is that if the next government sucks even more, we can vote them out.

Unfortunately I have become increasingly shocked, saddened, and frustrated by the way others speak about conservative voters. My social media is flooded with nasty stuff; hell, it's even in some of the group chats I participate in. No I am not stupid, no I am not fascist. I'm not one of the loud mouth conservatives spewing crap who deserves to be called out, I am simply doing what I think is best for me and my family. If you think that makes me a bad person, or if that makes me stupid, then so be it.

When you walk into a polling station and mark an X on a ballot, or write a name on an advanced ticket, there is a reason behind your vote. I respect anyone's decision as I don't walk in your shoes or know what your struggles are.