The two largest political parties in Canada faced off in a polarizing election (at the expense of the smaller Canadian parties): the Liberals (slightly left of centre), vs. Conservatives (right wing big tent party). Canada’s political system works as several simultaneous races for a parliamentary representative for their area, then the political party with the most representatives total selects (or has selected beforehand) a leader who will be the Prime Minister.

Now the Conservatives had been expected to take over due to the previous Liberal leader, Justin Trudeau, being blamed for inflation and anything bad by Conservatives, Trudeau not accomplishing much and people being tired of the incumbent. But then, Justin Trudeau steps down and chooses a new leader who calls an election, Trump gets in office and threatens Canada, leading enough people to realize what shit-fuckery Trump style politics in Canada would lead to (not as many as I’d like, but enough).

The Conservatives had a decent vote share, but the leader, Pierre Poilievre who ran on a diet version of populist conservative nationalism, lost his own seat. In the meantime, the province (a sub-national region) of Ontario also held an election. The Progressive Conservative party (right of centre populist) got majority power in the province again due to the party and leader, Doug Ford, campaigning strongly against Trump.

The provincial party had been warning the national one to change tack against Trump, both in private from leaked statements and in public from some current and former campaign managers. The Nova Scotia Premier, (leader of another province, also a Conservative party) also warned them. However, Pierre was too slow to do that, and his campaign style of not letting the press ask questions freely remained, reminiscent of the Trump administration, which partly contributed to Canada’s Conservative relative loss of power.

In Trump-style politics, Dear Leader (Pierre who did not get elected in his own election race) can do no wrong, so now that the election is done, it’s time for the blame game and the knives are out. The crazies of the Conservative party are going to attack anyone, even if they are politically aligned, if they dared to tell the truth about Poilievre’s likeness to Trump leading him to failure.

His headline accomplishments are leading the Bank of Canada as governor, keeping Canada out of the worst of the 08 recession, then helped ease the fall of UK’s economy post-Brexit, then in his short 1st term as Prime Minister taking over from Trudeau, he managed to shut Trump up about the 51st state stuff for nearly a month, after just one call.

Three, two, one, zero, minus one.

Unlike his Conservative opponent, Carney has a resume of fixing problems more than talking. He has done a lot of talking during the campaign, as one should to get elected, now Canadians have a part in holding him to account as PM.

The rest of the world would help out if Trump hadn’t just messed with literally everyone else at the same time…

I don’t think it had the effect of costing Poilievre votes, but it probably did bring interest and higher participation by typically ambivalent people in that riding.

I’m sitting here waiting for the Bloc Quebecois to run in Vancouver.

Canadians still didn’t want to trust them with a majority.

I don’t have the same read as you on this point specifically. 43% and 42% (for Cons) are both majority earning popular vote numbers in Canada, but it did mean that there was more support for the Liberals instead of the NDP overall (up from 33% in 2021). You can talk about held noses but Carney was viewed as a legitimately competent leader for our time of crisis and people voted accordingly. There were a lot of instances of Conservatives winning due to split votes in Southwest Ontario that was the main thing keeping them from a majority government.

I do think with the NDP wielding the balance of power, it is indeed a good idea to push for abolishing FPTP among many progressive reforms, but we don’t have to commit to PR or bust from the start.

My point is: The shitty electoral system that keeps the Liberals in, is also the one that kept them out of majority territory this time.

Good Cop Bad Cop Lutnick strikes again.

The Canadian Edition of the Valve splashscreen

Going to keep myself in the dark until tomorrow morning. Good luck Canada’s democracy!

Edit: I see democracy has prevailed! And a minority with NDP holding the power balance is a favourable result for progressives!

On the other hand maybe his character and judgement will be strong enough to do better.

Canadians including myself are all too familiar of politicians losing their convictions to appease established political interests. The fact that Carney has been an outsider to our politics until this year, has me optimistic that he would more likely than most to hold onto them to do what is right (in the utilitarian sense), not just for the connected elite. But it can happen to anyone so I’m not holding my breath for it either.

If Mark Carney wins, he will govern in Poilievre’s shadow

Only if we Canadians let him. If Carney, who professed environmentally conscious thinking in his book Values, is willing to borrow Poilievre’s ideas for a campaign, I imagine he is also willing to listen to ideas from the people just the same in government.-

Now’s (or Monday if we hear the result is a Liberal majority) is not the time to despair. It’s the time to put our own progressive slate of ideas together and tell our MPs what we want and how we as Canadians can accomplish it. Rhetoric is rhetoric, I think it’s high time for action, no matter what the ultimate make up of the House is next week.

(944) 753 - 9547 [WHISKEYLIQ]

/s

I’d posted a couple times in !chatter@lemmy.ca but it hadn’t caught on. Would be good to start a new community for this.

No major disagreement from me.

That’s a sound plan IMO and I’m in support of doing all of that. We can act in this way, but during the campaign the parties have been pressed to make a unilateral declaration on how the state will be organized, which is not within their capability.

Also note that Canada has already paid a toll with our aid workers being killed by Israeli forces, so we still have to keep that in mind as we proceed.

Party leaders can indicate their ideal goals, but there’s nothing any of the leaders can promise about the fate of Palestine itself, or whether it is free and democratic, or if a despot gets installed, since it relies on so many factors outside our control.

Many saw the move as a revival of the party’s identity, and some even speculated that the Liberal government might fall and the NDP could mount a breakthrough campaign.

Even as I saw the government forcibly end the workers’ strike and the NDP break the confidence agreement over it, I saw it at the time more as political maneuvering, than an actual revival of the party. I wanted Singh and MPs to stand with striking workers literally rather than just figuratively. They say a lot of nice words like “we will fight for you”, but are always light on details about what they would do if they were in power, and we have not seen concrete action taken yet either (I get that legislature wise that’s not entirely their fault).

The Gaza/Free Palestine problem is also an Achilles’ heel wedge issue destroying the party as well. Canada and by extension the NDP can do little about that besides posturing, while it is both in International courts and being massively funded by the US. Most of our energy should be on problems we can solve rather than those we can’t, and we shouldn’t shun people completely because they don’t come with picture-perfect views on one issue or another, since that is what gets exploited by bad-faith actors and trolls.

I have real hope in the BCNDP, ABNDP, SKNDP and MBNDP for having actual ideas to solve actual issues of inequality, homeless and the housing crisis, healthcare. The ONDP is on the right track but still quite irrelevant…, and Singh seems to be following in their path rather than Western NDP style which I think we need some aspects of again. Tommy Douglas, a prominent Saskatchewan CCF leader and Premier after all.

I had very recently come across a reactionary content left-wing YouTube channel, reacting to Rachel Maddow of MSNBC reacting to Elon Musk’s interview… I thought that was pretty bizarre. (link).

It was a 30 second intro segment, then a 8 minute clip of the Maddow show, followed by a 1 minute outro commentary segment.

Nice job Mr. WhiskeyLeaks.