Canadian political thread
- Thread starter TheGnome
- Start date
Part of the reason housing is so expensive is that foreign buyers can essentially buy Canadian citizenship if they invest enough money. They don't immediately get citizenship, but they can get permanent residency by investing enough money, and that's generally seen as a path to citizenship eventually. Lots of rich people in other countries like China that want a safe haven to run to if something bad goes down in their own country, I knew someone like this, he had to go check on his family's unoccupied house in the GTA periodically while he was at UofT for school.
Also there is the "Vancouver model" of transnational crime which has basically put real estate out of reach for all but criminals and the ultra-wealthy:
1) Import cheap drugs from Asia/South America.
2) Sell imported drugs on the street.
3) Launder drug money through real-estate and casinos.
4) Use laundered money to buy more cheap drugs.
5) Goto 1.
And let's also not forget the low interest rates that have been in place for decades now, along with taxpayer backed CMHC insurance handed out to anyone who wants it. By the way, the Conservative plan intends to increase the length of mortgages available so even more people can blow their brains out with crazy amounts of debt. It all just pushes house prices higher, the more people can borrow, the more expensive things become.
I remember being baffled when they announced that as their strategy for the housing price crisis. It not only doesn't solve the problem, but makes things even worse.
Conservative policy makers: "Yes, let's let folks take even bigger, longer term mortgages to solve this housing price problem. That totally will solve housing in some areas being straight up unaffordable for anyone making less than six figures. Not only that, let's saddle young folks with 30-40+ years of non-stop payments. What could possibly go wrong there, especially with how unstable the economy is?"
Not that the Liberal plan is much better, but that Conservative housing strategy overall just seemed completely horrible and out of touch with reality.
In other news, it appears media outlets are starting to do their usual endorsements. The Toronto Star, unsurprisingly, endorsed the Liberals. I read the endorsement and it was actually not too bad. It amounted to "Yes, they've made many mistakes and not kept every promise, but the economy's doing great, a lot of people have been lifted from poverty, and though they need to do more, their environmental policy is much better than the Cons". They also ripped into the Conservatives and pointed out that their platform is essentially one of austerity akin to that of the PC party in Ontario. I imagine all of the Postmedia outlets will do their usual lockstep Conservative endorsement soon enough.
I had the TV on, and it's just non-stop negative ads from the Conservatives right now. I had the weather channel on and there was at least 1-2 Conservative ads per commercial break. None of them, of course, talk about the Con platform. All of them were attack ads on Trudeau with claims that the Liberals would make people pay more taxes. One of the ads was particularly bad and seemed like it was written for people with the mental capacity of a 6th grader. It was basically "Trudeau bad Scheer good". It's pretty depressing that that's where we're at.
That's not really true, I bought a place in Vancouver a couple of years ago and I'm not a criminal and not even wealthy. Low interest rates help a lot. Single family homes are out of reach for most people, though.
That 4.3 million piece of land would be worth more without the house on it. You're paying for the land/location nowadays and not the house that's built on it.
Did you buy a condo or apartment? Because most of the remaining single-family stuff in Vancouver proper is insanely priced; I make good money and I wouldn't even consider it, even with a sub 3% interest rate...
A condo. Yeah, all the single family homes are out of reach for 99% people out there unless they already have equity build up from a previous home or get a big down payment gift from their parents.
Obama has endorsed Trudeau and wants him to continue to be PM. Weird for an American to do endorsements, especially a previous US president, but I guess he and Trudeau were pretty close so it makes sense.
Obama knows the evil that lurks in the hearts of all Conservatives.
Nanos sees PM with 127 safe districts, Conservatives at 84
More than one in four remain up for grabs, pollster says
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s party leads his top rival in safe districts ahead of Canada’s election next week, but is bleeding support to smaller parties while many races remain too close to call, polling shows.
Seat projections by Nanos Research, unveiled Wednesday at Bloomberg’s Canadian Fixed Income Conference in New York, showed Trudeau’s Liberals are on pace to win at least 127 of the parliament’s 338 seats, with the Conservatives next with at least 84 seats. Another 95 seats remain too close to call in the Oct. 21 vote, while smaller parties are on the rise.
Nail chewing time. :high:
More than one in four remain up for grabs, pollster says
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s party leads his top rival in safe districts ahead of Canada’s election next week, but is bleeding support to smaller parties while many races remain too close to call, polling shows.
Seat projections by Nanos Research, unveiled Wednesday at Bloomberg’s Canadian Fixed Income Conference in New York, showed Trudeau’s Liberals are on pace to win at least 127 of the parliament’s 338 seats, with the Conservatives next with at least 84 seats. Another 95 seats remain too close to call in the Oct. 21 vote, while smaller parties are on the rise.
Nail chewing time. :high:
It's impossible to tell at this point what may happen. One of the recent Angus Reid polls asked if people would consider switching their vote to prevent a party from gaining power, and a non-trivial chunk of NDP voters said they would consider it. For both those who said they would vote Liberal, but also even more so those who said they'd likely vote NDP, they were much more open to switching their vote to their second choice. For people who said BQ it was less the case, but still there was a chunk that suggested they were willing to switch their vote.
So ultimately, it will all come down to if people who are currently saying they will vote NDP or BQ end up voting for who they said or not. If BQ does beat out the Liberals in Quebec, then the Liberals probably won't win since they will lose double digit seats. Ontario's polls have also been shifting again. A few days ago the Cons were basically tied with the Liberals but now the Liberals are starting to build a gap again. The Liberals are still holding onto the vast majority of Atlantic Canada. The Cons still have a strong grip on Alberta, but less so Saskatchewan and Manitoba now.
So ultimately, it will all come down to if people who are currently saying they will vote NDP or BQ end up voting for who they said or not. If BQ does beat out the Liberals in Quebec, then the Liberals probably won't win since they will lose double digit seats. Ontario's polls have also been shifting again. A few days ago the Cons were basically tied with the Liberals but now the Liberals are starting to build a gap again. The Liberals are still holding onto the vast majority of Atlantic Canada. The Cons still have a strong grip on Alberta, but less so Saskatchewan and Manitoba now.
It's happened before *cough*1993*cough*, and I could easily see it happening again with the right upswell of support.
It's not necessarily Montreal where the Liberal seats are in jeopardy. Montreal itself seems to still be considered safe. Elsewhere though,there's tons of toss-up Liberal seats right now that are between them and the BQ, or between the Liberals, the BQ, and the NDP. The Bloc proportion of potential voters has seemed to have leveled off a bit after a week or two of steady rises, which causes current projections to agree with your suggestion that they won't get more seats than the Liberals. It seems more the question is if the Bloc will take a big chunk of seats from the Liberals. How the Liberals will do also depends heavily on if the NDP performs how they are polling. A lot of those toss-up seats were previously leaning Liberal but because of the NDP's strong performance in polling recently, they are now much less certain to be Liberal since the Liberals and NDP could end up splitting their votes and having the BQ win. I suppose the other thing to keep in mind is that the Liberals likely overperformed in the last election, and were likely always going to lose some of these seats in Quebec that they won last time but didn't previous control.
This election is going to come down entirely to if the left and centre-left splinter their voting too much. The Conservatives have certainly not been making gains in polling for several weeks now (they've been stuck at 32-33% for a long time now, and have been suffering in polling in Ontario again after starting to recover), enthusiasm for them seems incredibly low, and their recent announcement that their first order of business will be to repeal the carbon tax likely won't go over particularly well over the next few days. That seemed like a very odd announcement to make this close to election day. If anything, statements like those might send votes on the left to the Liberals since it helps reinforce people's fears about the Conservatives (lack of) climate policy and may make them want to vote for what they perceive to be the safest option against the Conservatives. As I mentioned in an earlier post, in polling a lot of people seem open to voting to keep certain people/parties out of power, and the Conservatives are playing with fire by putting forth their most divisive policies front and centre literally days before the election.
A new Forum/Toronto Star poll is out (note that's a PDF). There's some pretty interesting numbers in it. In general, the Liberals are at 30%, the Conservatives dipped below 30% to 29% (this is one of the first polls showing under 30% from what I remember), and the NDP is still hovering around 20%. The Greens are still sitting at 8%, the BQ at 7%, and PPC at 4%.
Scheer is incredibly unpopular:
Singh's numbers are through the roof:
However, Trudeau still leads both Scheer and Singh for who would make the best PM by a few percentage points.
Climate Change and the environment are still the leading issue, though jobs are a close second now. This is why I thought it was bizarre of Scheer to say a day or two ago that the Conservatives' first order of business if they were to win would be to repeal the carbon tax. Climate and the environment have been either the top issue of the second highest ranked issue on nearly every poll I've looked at for months now.
Scheer is incredibly unpopular:
This is compared to Trudeau's spread of 39% approve/53% disapprove. However Scheer also has twice as many people who said they didn't know compared to Trudeau. Scheer's approval being below that of the general numbers for the Conservatives suggests to me that he is likely not popular even amongst Conservative supporters. Net approval of -30% is substantial to say the least. You could take all of those "don't know" people,add them to Scheer's approval percentage, and only then would it match Trudeau in net approval. He's that unpopular. If the Conservatives win, it seems like it will despite Scheer's leadership, not because of Scheer's leadership.
Singh's numbers are through the roof:
he has +25% net favourability, up from 1% a week and a half ago, which is absolutely crazy. It's such a shame the NDP didn't let him loose like they did in the debate months earlier. I think our election would look completely different had they done something like that. Now that he's showing his personality and who he is, he's becoming incredibly popular.
However, Trudeau still leads both Scheer and Singh for who would make the best PM by a few percentage points.
Climate Change and the environment are still the leading issue, though jobs are a close second now. This is why I thought it was bizarre of Scheer to say a day or two ago that the Conservatives' first order of business if they were to win would be to repeal the carbon tax. Climate and the environment have been either the top issue of the second highest ranked issue on nearly every poll I've looked at for months now.
I'm not super surprised about Scheer's personal numbers being what they are - he barely won the Conservative leadership in the first place.
And thanks to our wonderful first past the post electoral system, the BQ will have 50% more seats in parliament than the NDP with barely over a third as much national support. The Greens will have their standard single seat (Elizabeth May) with more national support than the BQ, who were projected to get 33 seats last I checked.
Isn't "democracy" wonderful? I look forward to one of the Cons or Libs getting a majority government with barely over 30% popular national support.
Crazy changes on the polling front. 6 polls came out today, and the Cons appear to have completely lost their 1 point lead in in voter intention and are losing ground big time on seat projections. The Cons only lead in a single poll, and within margin of error. Otherwise either they have tied the Liberals, or the Liberals are ahead. In one case the Liberals are ahead outside of margin of error now by a few points. The NDP seems to have lost a couple points over the last couple days (every poll reflects this. They went from a consistent 20% to 18% in most and 14% in one) and mostly to the benefit of the Liberals. BQ is still doing quite well though so Quebec is still a gigantic question mark. The Liberals' tactics of going on the attack in Ontario seem to be working as they have continued to pull a non-trivial gap over the Conservatives again.
The probability of a Conservative majority is now at or less than 1% on both CBC and 338Canada (and the latter hasn't even updated their numbers yet) and the highest probability outcome for CBC is now a Liberal minority at 50% with a Liberal majority at around 15%, giving them nearly a 2/3rds chance of winning right now (The Cons have a 35% chance at a minority).
As always, we're far from out of the woods so keep your fingers (and toes if necessary) crossed. Things could definitely be worse.
I do think the Conservatives may have been too aggressive in the last week with their attacks, and it likely has backfired. Their talks of essentially demanding a majority and laying out their first 100 days of running government looked rather greedy, and they've made a number of claims (party that wins most seats gets first stab at forming government, if the Liberals don't win the most seats Trudeau must step down, etc.) that have been quickly debunked by both the media and other parties. This has made them look rather desperate, and when combined with several bizarre announcements like their intention to repeal the carbon tax as the first thing they do as a government, has seemingly put them on the back foot at the worst time possible.
One CBC analyst said that this election is essentially the two major parties losing no matter the outcome. I think that's a reasonable assessment. The Liberals, had they not had their stupid scandals, would probably have walked away with another majority easily since prior to SNC they had a dominating lead in the polls for a good chunk of their 4 years. The Conservatives have come off as desperate and like they haven't moved away from what got them voted out in the first place, all while having a leader that has done them far more damage than good. In light of all of the Liberal scandals, a better leader and a platform that didn't feel 10 years out of date might have netted the Conservatives a comfortable minority, if not a majority.
The NDP has done well to show they are in fact recovering from their wipeout in 2015 after some initial troubling signs, but I think they came to the realization too late that they have an excellent leader who they need to put out in public and let talk candidly, and in general they need to be out in public pushing their message more. Singh was such an unknown to the public that many didn't know what to think of him. After the debates folks started to realize that he's actually a rather interesting guy, and that's been reflecting in the fact that he far and away is the party leader with the most approval from the public, and has been on track to overtake Trudeau as the person best suited for PM.
The probability of a Conservative majority is now at or less than 1% on both CBC and 338Canada (and the latter hasn't even updated their numbers yet) and the highest probability outcome for CBC is now a Liberal minority at 50% with a Liberal majority at around 15%, giving them nearly a 2/3rds chance of winning right now (The Cons have a 35% chance at a minority).
As always, we're far from out of the woods so keep your fingers (and toes if necessary) crossed. Things could definitely be worse.
I do think the Conservatives may have been too aggressive in the last week with their attacks, and it likely has backfired. Their talks of essentially demanding a majority and laying out their first 100 days of running government looked rather greedy, and they've made a number of claims (party that wins most seats gets first stab at forming government, if the Liberals don't win the most seats Trudeau must step down, etc.) that have been quickly debunked by both the media and other parties. This has made them look rather desperate, and when combined with several bizarre announcements like their intention to repeal the carbon tax as the first thing they do as a government, has seemingly put them on the back foot at the worst time possible.
One CBC analyst said that this election is essentially the two major parties losing no matter the outcome. I think that's a reasonable assessment. The Liberals, had they not had their stupid scandals, would probably have walked away with another majority easily since prior to SNC they had a dominating lead in the polls for a good chunk of their 4 years. The Conservatives have come off as desperate and like they haven't moved away from what got them voted out in the first place, all while having a leader that has done them far more damage than good. In light of all of the Liberal scandals, a better leader and a platform that didn't feel 10 years out of date might have netted the Conservatives a comfortable minority, if not a majority.
The NDP has done well to show they are in fact recovering from their wipeout in 2015 after some initial troubling signs, but I think they came to the realization too late that they have an excellent leader who they need to put out in public and let talk candidly, and in general they need to be out in public pushing their message more. Singh was such an unknown to the public that many didn't know what to think of him. After the debates folks started to realize that he's actually a rather interesting guy, and that's been reflecting in the fact that he far and away is the party leader with the most approval from the public, and has been on track to overtake Trudeau as the person best suited for PM.
Wow, great updates. 
Got an email, apparently G&M online is free for the weekend, all stories open...I’m not a sucker for punishment.
Over on the Guardian, there is an op-Ed proclaiming Trudeau is a fake progressive....ugh. The die is cast, hopefully the libs drag their asses across the finish line.
Got an email, apparently G&M online is free for the weekend, all stories open...I’m not a sucker for punishment.
Over on the Guardian, there is an op-Ed proclaiming Trudeau is a fake progressive....ugh. The die is cast, hopefully the libs drag their asses across the finish line.
Now there's news coming out that the Conservatives themselves hired a company to smear the PPC on social media. My impression is that parties don't do this themselves usually but instead 3rd party supporters sometimes do (like the company running anti-Trudeau "He was never ready" ads in spring that was technically unaffiliated with the Conservatives). The Conservatives themselves hiring this company does not help them shake their reputation for being dirty when it comes to campaigning, and this close to election day this will leave an even worse taste in people's mouths and is even more negative press for the Cons, who've had a fair amount lately. The anti-PPC campaign stopped on June 29th, which was the cut-off for third-party advertising though the company-run account continued to tweet stuff with similar content, but just didn't specifically target the PPC.
I wouldn't be shocked if the Cons did the same thing for the other parties. At this point I'd put nothing above them. They've essentially adopted Republican-style campaigning for a few elections now and, if I remember right, they hired a Republican strategist for this election.
Also funny in the other CBC article on this topic is that Bernier also was complaining about the Rhinoceros Party running a candidate named Maxime Bernier in Bernier's riding. I forgot about that. It's still pretty amusing.
I wouldn't be shocked if the Cons did the same thing for the other parties. At this point I'd put nothing above them. They've essentially adopted Republican-style campaigning for a few elections now and, if I remember right, they hired a Republican strategist for this election.
Also funny in the other CBC article on this topic is that Bernier also was complaining about the Rhinoceros Party running a candidate named Maxime Bernier in Bernier's riding. I forgot about that. It's still pretty amusing.
These are blatant Trump tactics. Did someone hire Steve Bannon??? Hopefully enough Canuck voters pay attention to the news and vote accordingly. :facepalm:
Beef Supreme
Ars Tribunus Angusticlavius
Yep. I’d love a Liberal/NDP coalition government, with the hope that they could work on electoral reform. Sadly, my experience in Ontario has really tempered my enthusiasm and increased my general disappointment in people. At least it seems that a Conservative majority appears unlikely at this point.
Yes, good luck folks. I'm following my usual strategy of "Expect the worst. Hope for the best". I'd like to trust the polls, but given how things have gone the last few years, I know that's not a great idea.
I already voted. It was incredibly quick but I went in the morning and everyone else there voting was either a senior citizen or a university student. Now to just wait and see.
I voted at lunch with the wife (and kids in tow, because they need to learn the importance of it early on). We saw a few of the other families from their school, but not a whole lot of people.
I'd like to feel more hopeful. I'd also like to be able to go to bed at my usual time, pretending that I can wait until morning to find out the results.
I'd like to feel more hopeful. I'd also like to be able to go to bed at my usual time, pretending that I can wait until morning to find out the results.
Given how important BC is going to likely be in this election, it's gonna be a late night for anyone staying up to see the results.
Welp... I hope I don't regret this.
Just voted. My riding is one in which the Greens have a decent chance, and we've successfully elected Greens here provincially (but never federally). So I'm hoping for a Green victory (which is admittedly a long shot), or failing that a Liberal status quo. But if the Conservatives win here because of vote splitting, I'm going to feel really stupid.
Just voted. My riding is one in which the Greens have a decent chance, and we've successfully elected Greens here provincially (but never federally). So I'm hoping for a Green victory (which is admittedly a long shot), or failing that a Liberal status quo. But if the Conservatives win here because of vote splitting, I'm going to feel really stupid.
Voted here. 45mins of walking in the rain to get to the hall. Better be worth it
Results start coming in pretty quick (in the next hour or two if I'm doing my timezone math right).
I can't decide if I should watch the results or not. I'm already nervous about what may happen.
edit: oh wow, a right wing third party political group doing incredibly dirty business targeting areas that aren't favourable for the Conservatives on election day? Colour me unsurprised: Robocalls tell voters to head to the polls a day late
I can't decide if I should watch the results or not. I'm already nervous about what may happen.
edit: oh wow, a right wing third party political group doing incredibly dirty business targeting areas that aren't favourable for the Conservatives on election day? Colour me unsurprised: Robocalls tell voters to head to the polls a day late
All of those "Canada Strong and Proud" groups are super shady.
I think results start rolling in around 7pm ET (4pm PT).
Thankfully there wasn't much of a wait when I casted my vote around lunch time. In my riding I expect conservatives to take Northern BC again, with left-leaning voters split between NDP and Liberals. Looks like it'll be a long evening though.
Thankfully there wasn't much of a wait when I casted my vote around lunch time. In my riding I expect conservatives to take Northern BC again, with left-leaning voters split between NDP and Liberals. Looks like it'll be a long evening though.
Here's the CBC livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYrY_945co0
It's already started, but it should start getting interesting past 7PM Eastern.
It's already started, but it should start getting interesting past 7PM Eastern.