Atlantic Canadian Politics Thread

[Marty_Mcfly]

My predictions for tomorrow's election in NL:

A Liberal minority government, but the PCs have momentum and are knocking on the door

http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/showpost.php?p=8574369&postcount=44

[MonctonRad]

I wonder if JT is getting nervous. The Liberal fortress in Atlantic Canada is crumbling faster than the walls of King's Landing under the hot breath of Drogon.

[Marty_Mcfly]

It's indeed really interesting times in our neck of the woods.

I wouldn't be surprised tomorrow if we end up with a PC minority or a slim PC majority. I'd honestly be more surprised with a Liberal majority unless it were by only 1-2 seats.

[Marty_Mcfly]

There's some juicy last-minute stuff going down in a currently Liberal-held district that I predicted to stay Liberal. Another member of the Liberal party spoke to people in Placentia West-Bellevue yesterday and suggested to them that the sale of the local shipyard could be in jeopardy if there was a change in government, even though the government can not stop such a transaction. It sounds like it may be backfiring, a lot of people are mad at the Liberals for suggesting this.

By now predicting that district to flip, that now has me projecting a PC minority government over a Liberal minority.

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by Marty_Mcfly

It's indeed really interesting times in our neck of the woods.

I disagree. You're either left with more of the same or another party that is equally more of the same that can't even run a full slate of candidates. Doesn't seem like anything is new or interesting from my vantage point.

If anything Newfoundland desperately needs a breath of fresh air before the ship capsizes entirely.

[Marty_Mcfly]

Originally Posted by JHikka

I disagree. You're either left with more of the same or another party that is equally more of the same that can't even run a full slate of candidates. Doesn't seem like anything is new or interesting from my vantage point.

If anything Newfoundland desperately needs a breath of fresh air before the ship capsizes entirely.

This could be the very first time ever that a government in NL has flipped after one election cycle. Before this the shortest reign by any party was 12 years. It may also be only the second time ever that we have elected a minority government. Couple that with the in-roads that the Green party have made in PEI and New Brunswick and I think there are at least a few things to peak your interest

-------

Final polling numbers coming out from Forum research last night:

PC: 47%
LIB: 38%
NDP: 7%
OTH: 8%

Projection from Forum: PC Majority.

[statbass]

Originally Posted by JHikka

I disagree. You're either left with more of the same or another party that is equally more of the same that can't even run a full slate of candidates. Doesn't seem like anything is new or interesting from my vantage point.

If anything Newfoundland desperately needs a breath of fresh air before the ship capsizes entirely.

Yes and no, I think.

It'll be the same in terms of leadership. Regardless if Ball (Liberals) or Crosby (PC) win they are essential cut from the same cloth, just that cloth is red on one side and blue on the other. Both are making promises that, quite frankly, neither can deliver on. I don't know if the politicians are afraid to address it or voters are afraid to hear it - but we all know we can't continue down this path. My hope is that people don't get caught in these "false hope" traps when they cast their vote today.

Change may not be happening currently but I think the will to change is - at least at a sub-conscience level; although currently no one wants to hear the reality of it. Given the current government may be the first "one-termer" in NL history and/or we may end up with only the third minority government in our history, this could be a signal that we want change, and sooner rather than later.

At the end of the day, change is needed and tough decisions will need to be made to get this place back on track. Whoever wins will have to start getting serious really soon. There'll be a lot pissed off folks - but that's the reality of it!

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by Marty_Mcfly

This could be the very first time ever that a government in NL has flipped after one election cycle. Before this the shortest reign by any party was 12 years.

Fair, but it feels like this flip-flopping in NL is a decade behind similar flip-flopping in NB. Only now are we seeing structural change against the embedded powers that be in NB.

Originally Posted by Marty_Mcfly

It may also be only the second time ever that we have elected a minority government.

Amongst two parties that traditionally hold power.

Originally Posted by Marty_Mcfly

Couple that with the in-roads that the Green party have made in PEI and New Brunswick and I think there are at least a few things to peak your interest

This isn't really relevant to NL, though, given that the provincial Green Party in NL is non-existent.

Originally Posted by statbass

Change may not be happening currently but I think the will to change is - at least at a sub-conscience level; although currently no one wants to hear the reality of it. Given the current government may be the first "one-termer" in NL history and/or we may end up with only the third minority government in our history, this could be a signal that we want change, and sooner rather than later.

That's a fair enough point but I don't really consider it change when you're simply flipping from one major party that has always run the province to another that has always run the province. Change would be voting against the establishment; not shifting the deck chairs around.

I'm not trying to be dramatic, but voting out a Liberal government for a PC government in Atlantic Canada doesn't exactly scream a wave of change to me, especially when there is a complete lack of a third option to consider.

[statbass]

Originally Posted by JHikka

That's a fair enough point but I don't really consider it change when you're simply flipping from one major party that has always run the province to another that has always run the province. Change would be voting against the establishment; not shifting the deck chairs around.

I'm not trying to be dramatic, but voting out a Liberal government for a PC government in Atlantic Canada doesn't exactly scream a wave of change to me, especially when there is a complete lack of a third option to consider.

I agree with you here, what you're saying is true. I guess my point lies along the lines that this is (hopefully) the start of change. Structurally, nothing is really going to change in this election.... the only options we have for government are either PC or Liberal, unfortunately. The NDP can never seems to get off the ground here, I think the may be more internal than anything else.

There is another option, the NL Alliance Party - created by a former NL PC party president back in November. In theory, this party could invoke change over time if they get some representation in the house of assembly. At the very least create some healthy opposition - something this province hasn't seen in a long time. Realistically that won't happen since they're so new and only have candidates running in a half a dozen districts. The polls have them winning no seats; however, there is a significant percentage of undecided voters. Some may brush this off as nonsense, but this is, at the very least, some evidence to suggest people want change here. To what degree it's hard to say right now. It'll be interesting to see what percentage of the popular vote they get.

The Liberals called an election no more than a month ago and days after bringing down a positive budget - i.e. not cuts or increased taxes. May be they thought this was a way to expedite themselves into another majority government. However, it does seem to be backfiring and they're finding themselves fighting tooth and nail to win support. People are not happy with current governance in this province.

This post could be a waste of breathe on my part... but I guess you gotta hold out some hope this province wants to move in the right direction. I guess we'll find out in 12 hours or so.

[JHikka]

Drew Brown has a good article in the Indepedent highlighting a lot of the issues i'm slightly hinting at with both the Liberals and the PCs.

https://theindependent.ca/2019/05/16/there-are-no-captains-at-the-wheel/

Originally Posted by Drew Brown

The Liberals and the Tories are the only parties in any position to form government after today. Neither of them have earned it. They share the same stale ideas, the same abysmal leadership, and the same frustrating tendency to treat voters like they’re stupid. The honest-to-goodness best case scenario in this election is a minority government where the leader loses his seat or gets fired.

[Marty_Mcfly]

It's a shame that the NDP spent so much time shooting themselves in their own feet leading up to this election. Since a lot of people are feeling real apathy towards the two usual suspects they could have likely gotten some considerable gains. Instead they just look like the buffoons that they have always looked like.

[statbass]

Originally Posted by JHikka

Drew Brown has a good article in the Indepedent highlighting a lot of the issues i'm slightly hinting at with both the Liberals and the PCs.

https://theindependent.ca/2019/05/16/there-are-no-captains-at-the-wheel/

Thanks for posting the link.

[q12]

New Brunswick making worldwide news for all the wrong reasons.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/30/media/canadian-cartoon-trump/index.html

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/ca...isher-artist-trump-cartoon-golf-migrants

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/canadian-artist-fired-after-viral-trump-cartoon-n1025071

[DTBourque]

Originally Posted by q12

New Brunswick making worldwide news for all the wrong reasons.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/30/media/canadian-cartoon-trump/index.html

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/ca...isher-artist-trump-cartoon-golf-migrants

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/canadian-artist-fired-after-viral-trump-cartoon-n1025071

Brunswick News' been in the news business for the wrong reasons for a while.

I never found that it felt like I was reading propaganda or anything like that, but if you have access to CBC or the Acadie Nouvelle, Brunswick News sometimes sticks out based on what they think is or isn't newsworthy.

They've also centralized more an more towards Saint John. The TJ and the Times and Transcript used to be separate papers and even rib each other. Now the TJ is treated like the provincial paper. For reasons I'll never understand, they run the same stories with different headlines, though.

[L'homard]

I love that cartoonist's work. I consider him one of the very best on Earth at his craft. I'm a huge fan of his.
I'm no fan of BNI, however they say they never saw the cartoon, and the artist does not deny this, unless I'm missing something.
Just because CNN, CBC and others around the world are reporting it as fact that he was fired because of the cartoon, it doesn't necessarily make it true.

[MonctonRad]

The cartoon was never submitted for publication, this is true, but the cartoon did go viral, and I'm sure the Irving's saw it somewhere on social media.

BNI has not been publishing any of de Adder's Trump cartoons for some time (likely to avoid irritating Trump who could slap new duties on softwood lumber in the blink of an eye). Regardless of whether this cartoon was published in a BNI newspaper or not, this was likely the last straw.

BTW, I agree, de Adder is truly a world class political cartoonist - sheer genius.

[lirette]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

The cartoon was never submitted for publication, this is true, but the cartoon did go viral, and I'm sure the Irving's saw it somewhere on social media.

BNI has not been publishing any of de Adder's Trump cartoons for some time (likely to avoid irritating Trump who could slap new duties on softwood lumber in the blink of an eye). Regardless of whether this cartoon was published in a BNI newspaper or not, this was likely the last straw.

BTW, I agree, de Adder is truly a world class political cartoonist - sheer genius.

I'm about as far as it gets from a conspiracy theorist but everything presented here just makes it overwhelmingly obvious that they were worried about being associated with someone producing negative content on Trump. Employed for 17 years, they don't print any of his trump cartoons...

Then 2 of his independent trump cartoons go viral with the 3rd going superviral and suddenly he loses his job with no reasons given to him.

There's a recent story that provides even further evidence that BNI would want to distance themselves in that a refinery in Philadelphia has just closed up shop making the Irving Oil refinery the biggest refinery in eastern North America.

Mark Hamill has recently been showing support for him on twitter. Quite the story for a guy from Riverview NB.

[Photo1]

Originally Posted by q12

New Brunswick making worldwide news for all the wrong reasons.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/30/media/canadian-cartoon-trump/index.html

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/ca...isher-artist-trump-cartoon-golf-migrants

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/canadian-artist-fired-after-viral-trump-cartoon-n1025071

Goes to show that Irving wants to 'control the message', when you have a legit "world class" talent and you let them go without notice or reason.

What Irving doesn't get is many will still see his message, they can't control the internet (although I'm sure they have or will try)...monopolies are not good for anyone except the monopoly.

Bad form Irving/BNI...bad form.

P1

PS> Wasn't their just a big hullabaloo in the courts about an Editor altering a headline or something in the T&T to make thing not look as bad for someone? That's not reporting, that's bias.

[Taeolas]

Wasn't sure if this fits better in the Politics thread or the Stats thread; but since it's the government plan, I'll throw it in Politics.

NB Growth Strategy and Action Plan

Basically the NB Government is hoping to increase immigration targets to be pulling in 7500 people a year (article has a typo and says 7,5000 but I think the CBC article was the correct 7,500 ), with a solid 1-year retention rate of 85%.

This is to answer a possible 120,000 jobs that will be available and not fillable from local sources.

Without digging deep into it, the targets seem ambitious, but I hope we exceed them. By the 2024 target date, that should put us around 800,000 population, and if we can maintain the rate, 900,000 and 1M would not seem that far away.

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by Taeolas

Basically the NB Government is hoping to increase immigration targets to be pulling in 7500 people a year (article has a typo and says 7,5000 but I think the CBC article was the correct 7,500 ), with a solid 1-year retention rate of 85%.

...
Without digging deep into it, the targets seem ambitious, but I hope we exceed them.

NB receives roughly 4.5K-5K international immigrants each year as of 2018, so adding another thousand or two onto that isn't too ambitious, at least IMO.

The biggest thing NB can do, and something that NS has been striving in lately, is bettering its interprovincial migration. Of Nova Scotia's 9.2K growth in population between 2017 and 2018 2.7K of that was simply more people moving to NS than moving away. During the same period 49 more people moved away from NB than moved in, a good number historically for NB but not nearly good enough to replace the retiring workforce.