We haven’t had a Canadian politics post lately, and a couple of interesting things have happened. First, it looks like Canada will finally get their version of the Patriot Act, with the help of the “Liberals”:
The Anti-Terrorism Act, also known as Bill C-51, easily passed third reading by a margin of 183 to 96, thanks to the Conservative government’s majority and the promised support of the third-party Liberals.
Here’s the backstory on why Justin Trudeau backed the bill:
“I do not want this government making political hay out of an issue … as important as security.” He freely acknowledged that “This conversation might be different if we weren’t months from an election campaign,” […] But “we know that, tactically, this government would be perfectly happy if the opposition completely voted against this bill because it fits into their fear narrative.”
Trudeau tried to offer some amendments to the bill but they were ignored. Perhaps some Canadian readers who understand your politics better might explain why Trudeau was afraid to oppose C-51. At least the NDP finally opposed [warning: autoplay video] Harper’s reeking pantload of fear diarrhea in legislative form.
Speaking of the NDP, they whupped the Tories [warning: another goddam autoplay vid] in the Alberta provincial elections, the first time that the Tories have been out of power there in 44 years. It wasn’t even close: the conservatives are now the #3 party in the Alberta Assembly, behind the NDP and the Wildrose provincial party. Apparently the extraction economy isn’t fun anymore when oil is $60 a barrel instead of $110.
Interrobang
I’ve been saying for years that when times are hard, Albertans are a bunch of socialists, and when times are good, Albertans are a bunch of National Socialists. Looks like my axiom is holding so far.
I have no idea what this will mean in the long term. I’m hoping that the AB NDP is smarter than their Ontarian counterparts, who wound up with an unexpected majority government in 1990, basically due to massive protest voting. Bob Rae and the NDP were woefully unprepared to actually govern, never having been in power before (similar situation in AB), and it was a disaster that gave us Mike Harris (neocon grifter in the Scott Walker mould) and the worst decade of Ontario’s history in my lifetime. I’m really hoping that doesn’t happen in Alberta, because the rational reaction vote against NDP incompetence would be Wildrose, and…the less thought about that, the better, for the sake of my sanity, at least.
I am hoping this will mean the end of Harper federally, but Trudeau’s rationale for voting for C-51 fucking stinks on ice, and definitely causes me to lose quite a bit of respect for him.
randy nowlan
Nothing has happened in Canada since the last world cup hockey game.
Oh, those two things you mention? Never mind them. Canadians don’t even notice them. Well, maybe just a little. Schadenfreude is not a Canadian word, and guilt is too much a Canadian feeling, but guilty schadenfreude is what a lot of Canadians felt the morning after the NDP victory in Alberta.
As to Trudeau and the Liberals not opposing Bill C-51, this was a choice of battles to lose. Facing a governing party with a clear majority, and an attitude that “If you are not with us then you are with the child pornographers” (from an earlier debate, but still applicable), the Liberals had nothing to gain by opposing the bill, and much to lose. The Liberals would immediately have been labelled by the government as being soft on security and this might have stuck, as most Canadians have not read C-51. Have you read the Patriot Act?
The NDP could oppose it because they were expected to, and so would lose nothing
Harper (leader of the Conservatives, and Prime Minister) long ago vowed to destroy the Liberals. To hand him a large hammer was not in the Liberals’ interest.
But back to Alberta.
There are no Liberals in Alberta, so Harper ignored it. He was wrong to, because the Liberals in Alberta call themselves NDP, and have been waging guerrilla war for a while. The previous Conservative government had so mismanaged the province that there was bound to be a change. Alison Redford (the previous premier) had filed expense returns that caused the beginnings of an RCMP investigation before she resigned.
So after an interim, Jim Prentice was sent from the east to lead the conservatives. Two things here. One, Jim Prentice has been referred to as Alison Redford in a tie. He did not sit right with Albertans. Two, Jim Prentice was sent from the east (possibly by Harper, remember him, not paying attention to Alberta?). Alberta is home of the saying “Let the eastern bastards freeze in the dark!” That came from the last time Ottawa tried to impose energy policy on Alberta, and it was done by Trudeau’s father.
And that is why there are no Liberals in Alberta.
BGinCHI
The real issue here is why the the Leafs failed to make the playoffs.
the Conster
So their right wing party is the Progressive Conservative party? Like calling the GOP the Liberal Republicans?
Burnspbesq
Holy moly!
http://www.lawfareblog.com/2015/05/second-circuit-strikes-down-215-program/
Back after i read this. Could be a VBFD.
Bobby Thomson
OT the Second Circuit just held that phone metadata collection by the NSA exceeds the scope of its powers under the Patriot Act. There is an interesting concurrence. This will be blogged heavily over the next two days.
Punchy
American politicians carry guns to show off to their constituents. Canadian pols ice-fish. Can I haz my Winnipeg igloo please?
CONGRATULATIONS!
@Burnspbesq: A quick once-over does lead me to conclude that this is, in fact, a VBFD.
Face
@Bobby Thomson: Nothingburger. House and Senate to pass bill explicitly giving them these exact powers in 3….2…..1
Steve Finlay
@the Conster: The Progressive Conservative party no longer exists at the federal level. It was taken over by the Reform party, which was controlled by hard right evangelical tyrants. It is now called the Conservative party, and is still the party of tyrants, religious bigots, racists and haters. It is also the federal government.
In Alberta, there still is a Progressive Conservative party. The hard bigoted right is represented by the Wildrose party. The really bad news is that the Wildrose in Alberta got more votes and seats than the Progressive Conservatives.
I was a member and donor o the federal Liberal party until their stupid position on C-51. I am not any more.
(Just to make things more confusing: The province of BC has a Liberal party. They are not Liberals; they are a hard right farm team for the federal Conservatives.)
OzarkHillbilly
@Bobby Thomson: My reading of the decision (first section only) is that the NSA is NOT precluded from being sued over this. That the District judge erred in saying they couldn’t be. There didn’t seem to be any finding beyond that.
the Conster
@Steve Finlay:
Do the Conservatives all campaign on taking people’s social!st healthcare away?
WereBear
Since we are talking elections, here’s Huckabee’s latest:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2015/05/huckster-for-jesus-huckabee-caught-pushing-fraudulent-bible-cancer-cures
This should be a huge scandal. I wonder why it isn’t?
OzarkHillbilly
@WereBear: Because our media is so liberal.
Calouste
@WereBear:
IOKIYAAWR.
mdblanche
No one could have foreseen that a Trudeau wouldn’t care what all you weak-kneed bleeding hearts thought.
Linnaeus
@Interrobang:
Bob Rae also wanted to take the NDP in a more rightward direction. So he became a Liberal.
Just One More Canuck
@the Conster: The Progressive Conservatives were a merger of the original conservative party and the Progressive Party, a farmer’s populist party. The federal PCs were decimated in 1993 by Chretien and the Liberals. The rump of the PCs eventually merged with the Reform party (our version of the Teabaggers) and became the Canadian Conservative Reform Alliance party, also known as the CRAP – they changed their name 1 day after announcing that brilliant piece of marketing, and eventually morphed back into the Conservatives
A lot of the provincial parties still use the name “Progressive Conservatives”. It reminds me of the PRI in Mexico, the “Institutional Revolutionary Party”
constitutional mistermix
@mdblanche: That was in response to the kidnapping and murder of a Quebec cabinet minister, and Trudeau’s invocation of the War Measures Act. Justin isn’t facing quite the same challenge.
the Conster
@Just One More Canuck:
Do the Conservatives all advocate for free market healthcare, modeled after the US system?
Steve Finlay
Correction to my earlier post: The Alberta PCs did get more votes than Wildrose. Wildrose won more seats because their support is geographically concentrated in southern Alberta cow country.
Do the Conservatives advocate free market health care? Absolutely not; nobody does in Canada except really freako fringe parties with no seats. Canadians know very well that the absence of accessible insurance in the US (before ACA) has driven thousands (probably more like hundreds of thousands) to financial ruin. It’s so well known that almost every advertisement for travel health insurance uses it.
What at least some Conservatives do promote is allowing wealthy people to pay extra for private health care, rather than being required to wait their turn in the public system. This makes sense to me, and to a lot of people, especially if there is a modest tax on the private services that generates revenue for the public system.
samiam
There isn’t much to understand about Canadian politics. There aren’t a lot of polarizing issues like the US. There are no idiot redstaters, gun culture, people still upset about losing the civil war etc. to deal with.
Don’t pay attention to the names. The Liberal and Conservative parties do not mean what you think they mean. Liberal and Conservative do not strike any chords like they do in the US. They are just names and both are similar in a lot of ways
All 3 major federal parties (Liberals, Conservatives, New Democrats) are well left of the 2 US parties.
All 3 parties agree on maybe 70% of things more or less and are not as far apart as they pretend to be on the other 30%. Nobody wants to dismantle the public healthcare system. Nobody is afraid of the gov’t coming to take away their guns. Handguns are very very very hard to purchase and transport. You have to pass all kinds of background checks and take all kinds of training and tests. Takes months. So I don’t think a lot of people have handguns.
To summarize, Canadian politics are boring. US politics are much more interesting imho.
Linnaeus
@samiam:
We are living in interesting times.
Kevin
@the Conster:
No. At worst, they advocate for more private options for people to jump the line, but they don’t actually advocate a US style free for all. Yet.
Kevin
@samiam: No, the conservatives in power are not well left of the US Democrats. That is absurd. The Harper that lives in your head does not exist in the real world.
Kryptik
All that I’ve read is that Harper, at the very least, is poliically the Canadian Bush II, though I don’t know how far that extends to the national Conservative party. Harper himself continues to sound likr he really wants to be as conservative as our GOP.
Just One More Canuck
@the Conster: No as Steve Finlay @20 and Kevin @23 say, public health care as a whole is not going anywhere – there are a lot of issues around what services are covered – there’s been a lot of cuts in areas like vision care and physio (definitely not a complete list)
Dex
Lots of confusion here it seems.
Couple of things: The Progressive Conservatives (also called the Tories) were a fusion of rural politicians and urban conservatives. As it developed, in general, the party overall was right of centre fiscally and left of centre socially. Even then, Canadian conservativism is very different from the US brand. For example, while it was the Social Credit party that initiated universal health care, its implementation and success hinged strongly on the efforts of numerous PC majority provincial governments working for it. When the Ontario Supreme Court declared that marriage was a protected right for all Ontarians, the majority PC government at the same declined to challenge the ruling in court, making it law.
The party always had two sides – the red and blue tories. Red Tories were more centrist in economic terms, especially in Ontario between the 50s-90s. They were bolstered by similar approaches from the Quebec and Atlantic members. The Blue Tories were both fiscally and socially conservative, dominated by rural and Prairie members. In 1991, Bouchard (a PC cabinet minister) led most of the Quebec PCs and Liberals to form the Bloc Quebecois, a separatist party. At the same time, a breakaway group of Western PCs formed the ‘Reform Party’, a hard right version of the PC. Two years later, the PCs went from a majority government to two seats in the House due to the vote splitting between the two factions and never recovered. Eventually Peter McKay won out for PC leadership over Red Tory David Orchard, and folded the party back into what is now the Federal Conservative Party.
So now our politics are a little more similar to the US, although most of our Conservative Party would be considered conservative Democrats at most with their policies.
As for Trudeau and Bill C-51, he’s in a position that he thinks needs to triangulate against a much stronger Conservative ad machine by starving the beast for easy attack material and hoping his populist message will carry through. I don’t think I agree with it, but he’s right that the Conservatives weakest point is going to be on the bill and the NDP’s first point is going to be against it. Unfortunately, I think the NDP are going to be more willing to target Trudeau and try and pull from his soft left flank.
samiam
@Kevin: Harper is not the Conservative party. It is a parliamentary system which is quite a bit different than the US system.
So while Harper may be further right than Obama in a lot of ways, His party and Canadian voters are further left than US Democrats and American voters overall. So Harper has to bend further left at times then he might normally want to.
I have always disliked Harper btw. So the last thing I care about is trying to defend him. Conservatives in general depends on who you are talking about. A lot are quite liberal because the regions they represent are quite liberal because Canada in general is quite liberal.
Anyways already sick of talking about it. Like I said I find Canadian politics quite boring and I find Harper quite boring.
Bobby Thomson
@OzarkHillbilly: that’s just the first part. If they had answered that differently they wouldn’t have gotten to the merits.
Kevin
@Just One More Canuck: Worst cuts are to prescription drugs (thanks Chretien!!). My very necessary, but expensive Crohn’s medication is not covered. If it weren’t for my employer’s benefit plan, I’d be out $25K a year!
Just One More Canuck
@Kevin: Thanks – forgot about prescription drugs when typing the earlier.
Tree With Water
The first order of business of all Canadians should be to study our political corrupt system to best learn what to avoid doing. Our so-called “Patriot” Act would be a great place for them all to begin that study.
Jane2
Trudeau’s an empty suit who had no reason to vote with the majority Conservative government. He’s bereft of policy and to date seems to be running on a platform of “I’m cute and I’m a Trudeau”. The Liberals have been in disarray for some years, but that does not prevent the Toronto-centric media from treating Trudeau as the Official Opposition leader, which he is not….they see the world in terms of Liberal/Conservative, regardless of what the electorate says.
Jimgod
@Jane2: Except that the electorate is kinda saying that it is a Liberal/Conservative battle. The polls have had the the Liberals and Cons trading first place for a while now with the NDP in third place.
What people need to understand is the regional, balkanized nature of Canadian politics. There really is no such thing as a national election. Different parties are competitive in different regions; the West is a Conservative-NDP battle, with the Greens becoming a force in BC. Ontario is a Liberal-Conservative battlefield, Quebec appears to be heading for a NDP-Liberal match-up and Atlantic Canada is pretty much a Liberal fortress. It’s not a national ideological battle like it is in the US between liberals and far rightists.
Kevin
@Jimgod: Even that doesn’t factor in the nature of Toronto/GTA vs the rest of Ontario. Liberals swept Toronto in the last election, took most of Brampton and Mississauga. The part of downtown Toronto they didn’t win, they took in a by-election last year.
Jimgod
@Kevin: Well true, we must be careful here. That was the provincial Liberal Party, not the feds. The Ontario PCs under Teabagger Tim Hudak were just awful and lost all the major urban areas. The Ontario NDP remains stuck in 3rd place from Bob Rae and I don’t seem them recovering from that at all. It’s one of those who else is there things, really.
For the federal Liberals under Trudeau, they have to do the same sweep, winning urban Ontario along with Atlantic Canada and a decent showing in BC to have any chance. We’ll find out in October.
Doug r
@BGinCHI: The Leafs suck, no issue there