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Re: 2015 Canadian Federal Election

Posted: 23 Aug 2015 23:27
by Kong Wen
TheGreatNads wrote:
Kong Wen wrote:and another term would risk damaging Canada almost beyond repair.
Talk about over the top. You and Vic are beginning to sound like those people who said if Obama is elected people are going to start being thrown into FEMA camps, or the U.S. will become the next Greece or whatever silliness. Partisan politics sure seems to bring out the stupid in people.

Harper's done bad things. If he's back, he'll probably do more bad things. But another term is not even remotely a risk for damaging Canada beyond repair.
Do you think I mean another Harper term would cause the Canadian economy to crumble and society to disintegrate into a bleak dystopia where every man has to don hockey gear and fight for his share of the dwindling maple syrup crop until the nation ultimately dissociates into warring states and is eventually absorbed into Russia? That's a poor assumption, reflective of your ignorance of or inattentiveness to context. You're beginning to sound like the kind of armchair analyst who jumps at the chance to make snarky, dismissive statements rather than give someone the benefit of the doubt. Partisan politics apparently does bring out the stupid in people.

I can't speak for Vic, but I'm not concerned about the lines on the map, or even about Canada's economy—despite the fact that Harper turned an inherited surplus into debt in his first term and has run budget deficits for the past 8 years in a row and that Canada is technically in a recession, an economy can almost always be fixed. No, I'm talking about "Canada" and what that means to people like me who could make a statement like the one you misrepresented here. I'm talking about a systematic dismantling of the values and institutions that contribute to Canada's national cultural identity. Specifically, I'm talking about stuff that a new government can't easily step in to fix, stuff that can get out of hand when left unchecked for another 4+ years.

For example, Bill C-51 is a mess of the "you're either with us or with the terrorists" variety that needs a serious overhaul to close loopholes that present a serious danger to e.g. free speech, privacy, and peaceful protest rights. 4 years of this could have profound effects on institutions like CSIS and RCMP if no oversight is implemented.

Speaking of big omnibus bills, Harper is good at burying sneaky stuff in giant reams of new legislation that get rushed through parliament. Like the time he leveraged the RCMP to illegally destroy long-gun registry records. When they came under investigation, Harper passes an omnibus bill that changed access to informations laws, making the offending officers' actions retroactively legal. Like Bill C-38, which effectively gutted or repealed the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, Fisheries Act, and Navigable Waters Protection Act. Like Bill C-23, the "[Un]Fair Elections Act" that's more effective at disenfranchising Canadians than preventing fraud. This stuff would all be difficult to parse out and repeal, even if a new majority government were formed this year—another 4+ years of Harper government or even a shift to a new minority government would be even trickier.

Ask a Canadian about the role and legacy of their military, and the most likely response you'll get is "Peacekeepers". The Canadian military used to be synonymous with UN Peacekeeping. We're now ranked 67th in terms of our contributions. For the first time in history, we lost a vote to become a member of UN Security Council (to Portugal in 2011). With Harper spending our military budget on second-hand jets (paying more than what they told us they would cost) and fear-mongering about ISIS, it's not likely that our reputation with the UN will be easy to repair as it is.

I'm not going to focus much attention on the Harper government's muzzling of federal scientists, because that's an issue that a new government should be able to rectify, but the damage Harper has done to Environment Canada and selling out Canada's environmental record oil interests in Alberta will be harder to untangle. It's easy to dump a whole province into corporate hands, but difficult to claw it back from them. (It's telling that members of his caucus have referred to environmentalists as "terrorists".)

Finally, perhaps the most irreversible damage is being done by his massive cuts to the arts & culture sector, including (although this is only the most high-profile example), the CBC, a treasured Canadian institution and a cornerstone of our national cultural identity. Aggressively de-funded, as it stands now, CBC is set to lose 25% of its workforce by 2020. I'd be very surprised if a new government that started right now could restore CBC to anything resembling what it used to be. (A fun side-note, Harper has also stacked the board with his ideological cronies, which could explain the broadcaster's move away from investigative shows to pap-business stuff like Dragon's Den.) The next institution to get the forced-to-fail treatment is Canada Post; recent changes to the otherwise profitable business jeopardize over 200 (union) jobs in Halifax alone. The clipped wings approach here is almost certainly aimed at forcing eventual privatization.

Another term is absolutely a risk for damaging Canada almost beyond repair.

Re: 2015 Canadian Federal Election

Posted: 24 Aug 2015 00:54
by TheGreatNads
Kong Wen wrote:Do you think I mean another Harper term would cause the Canadian economy to crumble and society to disintegrate into a bleak dystopia where every man has to don hockey gear and fight for his share of the dwindling maple syrup crop until the nation ultimately dissociates into warring states and is eventually absorbed into Russia? That's a poor assumption, reflective of your ignorance of or inattentiveness to context.
Criticizing me for making assumptions I'm not making. :D Actually I would be much more restricted. Like for example making a long-term difference in social outcomes, say life expectancy, crime rates, inflation/deflation, infant mortality, pollution, GDP per capita, carbon emissions, likelihood of dying in a car accident, whatever you like(I'm assuming you care about some of these things). That is a hard case to make that Harper's two terms so far have even made a dent in those aspects. That alone should make one cautious about making such strong predictions about a third term. But it doesn't seem to make a difference to you. Which is telling. You then go on to assume I'm only arguing against the most extreme(short of apocalypse anyway) of disaster scenarios. Which again, is telling, because you don't need such extreme scenarios for your statement to still be over the top. Not even close.
Kong Wen wrote:You're beginning to sound like the kind of armchair analyst who jumps at the chance to make snarky, dismissive statements rather than give someone the benefit of the doubt.
I do give the benefit of the doubt that you don't think apocalypse is going to happen if Harper is elected a third term. That doesn't mean I still don't think what you said is ridiculous
Kong Wen wrote:Partisan politics apparently does bring out the stupid in people.
Only difference is I don't actually care very much which side wins, quite frankly. I could agree that Harper losing is likely to be the better outcome, but not much more.
Kong Wen wrote:I can't speak for Vic, but I'm not concerned about the lines on the map, or even about Canada's economy—despite the fact that Harper turned an inherited surplus into debt in his first term and has run budget deficits for the past 8 years in a row and that Canada is technically in a recession, an economy can almost always be fixed.
If Canada ran a budget surplus it would be in an even bigger recession, just for the record. The idea that surplus = good, deficit = bad is one people need to get out of their heads. When people object to budget cuts and then criticize the deficit, they're basically talking out of both sides of their mouth.
Kong Wen wrote:No, I'm talking about "Canada" and what that means to people like me who could make a statement like the one you misrepresented here. I'm talking about a systematic dismantling of the values and institutions that contribute to Canada's national cultural identity.

Specifically, I'm talking about stuff that a new government can't easily step in to fix, stuff that can get out of hand when left unchecked for another 4+ years.
And what exactly is your standard determining whether something "can get out of hand" or is likely to get out of hand, or can't be fixed etc? Mostly what you have done is describe a bunch of things you don't like, stated that you think they could get out of hand, and then deferred to "values," "cultural identity," pixie dust, leprechauns etc. Which is just another way of saying: "I don't like Harper, here's a list of things I don't like." It seems to me for example the changes made to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act would not be particularly hard to change again, provided the support is there(and if the support isn't there, can you seriously then blame that on Harper? That doesn't make any sense).

You don't for example cite a single metric besides rather meager 25% employment of CBC employees(which btw is the absolute least likely area of the ones you mentioned to be irreparable) or 200 union workers being unemployed. You bring up a whole host of issues, but outside of a very narrow area of the UN business, their impact is basically unknown by you. You essentially talk about a bunch of bills that have been introduced or changed, and take for granted that the changing of these is likely to have a massive impact. One can certainly imagine irreparable environmental impacts that will be damaging to Canada as a result of particular policies. But is there actually very strong reason to assume, that unless, Harper isn't elected(or, even more implausibly, unless certain changes to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act aren't removed), there is going to be a massive change in environmental degradation? All this is assumed. It's often not even clear what exactly you're assuming, just reference to some potential doom in the future.

And by the way I'm basically agreeing that it is reasonable to assume that, so long as Harper isn't re-elected, there is a greater chance that more of these types of changes will not be implemented. I don't actually agree with that(certainly not with regard to issues of environment and privacy for example). But since the opposition parties have tended to be against this stuff while Harper was in office, I'll agree that it is a reasonable judgment, regardless of what I would speculate on what might happen in another situation. But it is at least worth noting the possibility that someone else in office would do similar things.

Re: 2015 Canadian Federal Election

Posted: 24 Aug 2015 01:57
by Kong Wen
TheGreatNads wrote:I do give the benefit of the doubt that you don't think apocalypse is going to happen if Harper is elected a third term. That doesn't mean I still don't think what you said is ridiculous
Fourth. And, ridiculous—you're free to opine, but stupid—no.
TheGreatNads wrote:Criticizing me for making assumptions I'm not making. :D Actually I would be much more restricted. Like for example making a long-term difference in social outcomes, say life expectancy, crime rates, inflation/deflation, infant mortality, pollution, GDP per capita, carbon emissions, likelihood of dying in a car accident, whatever you like(I'm assuming you care about some of these things). That is a hard case to make that Harper's two terms so far have even made a dent in those aspects.
That wasn't criticism for assumptions you're not making, that's an obviously intentionally exaggerated version your assumption, which you helpfully elucidate in this very paragraph. And given that you keep trying to put "some potential doom in the future" in my mouth, the joke seems warranted. Fortunately, while I do care about some of those things, the point of my entire last post was to demonstrate that that's not the case I'm making. The rest of this is facile strawman stuff. The point is I'm not talking about Canada as a geopolitical monolith, but rather as a cultural entity. You apparently think identity is spiritual mumbo-jumbo (OK), so there's not much point in discussing further, but since Harper has explicitly stated that one of his goals is to drive a shift in the Canadian ideological centre, I think it's fair game.
TheGreatNads wrote:
Kong Wen wrote:Partisan politics apparently does bring out the stupid in people.
Only difference is I don't actually care very much which side wins, quite frankly.
That much is clear.

It's also worth noting that none of my comments here are driven by partisanship.
TheGreatNads wrote:You don't for example cite a single metric besides rather meager 25% employment of CBC employees(which btw is the absolute least likely area of the ones you mentioned to be irreparable)
I'm glad of your optimism, but I disagree.

Heck, I don't necessarily think any one example from among this batch of offences would be impossible to reverse, but they add up. A government can't make fixing the mistakes of its predecessor too big a part of its mandate, as nice as that kind of campaign rhetoric can be.

For what it's worth, the examples of the CBC and Canada Post alone are enough to make my original point (that "another term would risk damaging Canada almost beyond repair") stand. The disavowal of crown corporations is a dramatic shift in the ideological landscape. The Peacekeeping missions, too. The rest is gravy.
TheGreatNads wrote:You bring up a whole host of issues, but outside of a very narrow area of the UN business, their impact is basically unknown by you. You essentially talk about a bunch of bills that have been introduced or changed, and take for granted that the changing of these is likely to have a massive impact.
Massive impacts don't have to play out in order for changes to be worrisome. We can certainly hope that we don't become a post-C-51 surveillance-/police-state. But the fact that the door is sitting wide open to it is unappealing. The fact that it's not just bad/casual wording, but rather a deliberate revival of some of the shit from Vic Toews's "you can either stand with us or with the child pornographers" Bill C-30 shows that there's some actual determination behind their focus on prodding the limits of privacy and policing.

In all of this, I'll be happy to be proven wrong. If Harper is elected again this year, and then a new party replaces him in 2019 and manages to reverse the backwards decisions he's enforced, I'll gleefully eat my hat and a cup of yogurt.

Re: 2015 Canadian Federal Election

Posted: 24 Aug 2015 02:00
by Kong Wen
Putting this in a separate post, because it's a divergence from the current plot, but it's excellent and on-point:

Margaret Atwood: Hair is in the election-season air, but is it crucial to the question of your vote? - in the National Post, Friday, 21 August.
Margaret Atwood wrote:But "Nice hair" makes them sound a bit envious, too: no one has ever accused Mr. Harper of having "nice hair." It also makes them sound trivial. Hair, an election issue? Really?
I've heard people refer to Harper as having Lego-man hair, so there's that.

Re: 2015 Canadian Federal Election

Posted: 24 Aug 2015 03:19
by TheGreatNads
Kong Wen wrote:Fourth.
Damnit.
Kong Wen wrote:That wasn't criticism for assumptions you're not making, that's an obviously intentionally exaggerated version your assumption, which you helpfully elucidate in this very paragraph. And given that you keep trying to put "some potential doom in the future" in my mouth, the joke seems warranted. Fortunately, while I do care about some of those things, the point of my entire last post was to demonstrate that that's not the case I'm making. The rest of this is facile strawman stuff. The point is I'm not talking about Canada as a geopolitical monolith, but rather as a cultural entity. You apparently think identity is spiritual mumbo-jumbo (OK), so there's not much point in discussing further, but since Harper has explicitly stated that one of his goals is to drive a shift in the Canadian ideological centre, I think it's fair game.
Talking about irreparable damage and then not being able to specify what it actually is in any tangible way is what I consider mumbo jumbo. It's just a collection of random stuff that based on some unspecified theory(that I interpret to be vulgar partisan politics) represents a shift from Canadian values which is somehow going to cause irreparable damage. Pixies and leprechauns. You may as well be telling me that Canadians are living lives of sin and God's punishment is coming. I don't actually see the difference.

But you know what? I'll apologize for accusing you of stupidity. You imply privatization of CBC and Canada Post is an example of what could happen if Harper is elected another term, and that this would be an example of damage beyond repair. I still don't like the way you worded your statement, and the privatization of CBC and Canada Post is probably not something I would at all describe as "damaging Canada almost beyond repair". That sounds hyperbolic to me. But since it's something tangible that one could consider a bad thing(actually I would agree), can fit the idea of being beyond repair(because there would be costs and difficulties associated with trying to then take away something from members of the private sector after it has been privatized) and it's not implausible, or utterly trivial, I'll agree that "stupid" was not an appropriate term.
Kong Wen wrote:Massive impacts don't have to play out in order for changes to be worrisome.
I would consider irreparable damage to be a massive impact, although maybe that's some kind of failure on my part.

Re: 2015 Canadian Federal Election

Posted: 24 Aug 2015 17:22
by The Shoemaker
Kong Wen wrote:Putting this in a separate post, because it's a divergence from the current plot, but it's excellent and on-point:

Margaret Atwood: Hair is in the election-season air, but is it crucial to the question of your vote? - in the National Post, Friday, 21 August.
Margaret Atwood wrote:But "Nice hair" makes them sound a bit envious, too: no one has ever accused Mr. Harper of having "nice hair." It also makes them sound trivial. Hair, an election issue? Really?
I've heard people refer to Harper as having Lego-man hair, so there's that.
That article really described what my point was earlier on about the `nice hair` comment!

I also had no idea Margaret Atwood was still writing.

On one last note, I don`t think I`m knowlegable enough on the political happenings of the last 8 years with Harper, but I will say that Canada`s identity is something that`s valuable to me, and I don`t think Harper has handled the preservation of it very well.

Re: 2015 Canadian Federal Election

Posted: 25 Aug 2015 15:55
by Kong Wen
So far, Harper's campaign has turned out to be more open & transparent than his government:
If We Want to Ask Stephen Harper Questions, We Have to Give His Party $78,000 - Vice

Re: 2015 Canadian Federal Election

Posted: 25 Aug 2015 22:10
by Jordan
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34043523

Canadians, your election is honestly more amusing than the American one.

Re: 2015 Canadian Federal Election

Posted: 25 Aug 2015 23:40
by The Shoemaker
Jordan wrote:http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34043523

Canadians, your election is honestly more amusing than the American one.
Thank goodness Kong posted that article when he did! :p

My vote goes to Darth Vader

Re: 2015 Canadian Federal Election

Posted: 26 Aug 2015 03:24
by Kong Wen
The Shoemaker wrote:My vote goes to Darth Vader
Funny that you should mention that, Shoe...

Someone has been creating villainous Liberal campaign posters to mock the dark/dramatic ones they've been using there.