On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 11:11:14 -0400, Rhino
<no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:

>Of our five major parties - Liberals, Conservatives, NDP, Bloc, and
>Green (and yeah, I know it is a stretch to call the Greens a major party
>given that they've never had more than 3 MPs and almost destroyed
>themselves entirely with their infighting during the last couple of
>elections), only the Conservatives are even nominally conservative when
>they have a leader that is from the non-progressive side of the party.
>(O'Toole ran to the LEFT of even the NDP when he was leader according to
>several of the pundits.) So, with 4 (or more like 4 and a half) of our
>parties being "progressive", that inclination drives practically
>everything that happens in this country.

I heard O'Toole speak in person and I don't think that's a fair
comment though CERTAINLY 'Conservative' in Canada is a bit left of
where the term is understood to mean in the US.

What IS true is that the last election proved the election was won and
lost in the 905 zone (e.g. Toronto but especially the suburbs outside
Toronto) and if a Conservative party leader is going to please Alberta
and Saskatchewan they're going to lose the 905 voters who are so
critical for victory.

One thing for sure: the next federal election will NOT be before April
2024 since that's when the redistribution of seats kicks in which
annoys me since my home is moving to a new district currently held by
the NDP. No way in HELL does Justin want to go to the people with the
current districts since the new boundaries will shift things even more
to Quebec and the Maritimes than now despite the fact the population
keeps shifting westwards. It's to the point that the average BC
district has 20-25% more voters than any Maritime district and 15%
more than your average Quebec district.

That's unjust but true - and why I've been saying for years that while
I don't support secession, BC and AB have far greater cause than
Quebec does.

On 2023-07-20 2:21 PM, The Horny Goat wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 11:11:14 -0400, Rhino
> <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
>
>> On 2023-07-19 1:10 AM, The Horny Goat wrote:
>>> On Tue, 18 Jul 2023 20:28:03 -0400, Rhino
>>> <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
>> Now that you've sold the business to your brother, he must be sweating
>> bullets figuring out how to pay that back....
>
> Nah - he got a fairly substantial "COVID discount" and what I got was
> a minimum 40% discount over what I could reasonably have expected 2
> years earlier before the pandemic.
>
>> The fundamental problem with this country is that way too many people
>> have let themselves be persuaded to be dependent on government to solve
>> all problems. No matter what's going on, the majority of people always
>> look to government when some problem develops, even when government
>> itself IS the problem. They are the first, and in many cases, ONLY
>> avenue of resolution to any issue. Private enterprise is only rarely
>> considered as a solution and typically viewed with suspicion by many. A
>> nanny state evolved as we were growing up and anyone who warned about
>> the consequences was dismissed or denigrated.
>
> COVID _WAS_ a crisis no question about it - for me the low point was
> hearing about that nursing home in Ontario where the staff had
> abandoned their charges and infirm seniors were left to soil
> themselves for a week before the Feds sent the military in to clean
> up. That was a national disgrace.
>
Indeed it was.

> Trouble is there are too many people who thought that a crisis was a
> good time to make "progress" on their laundry list of "needs" and our
> man in Ottawa agreed with far too many of these items.
>
Trudeau just LOVES spending money. Look at all the money he's thrown
around, especially in recent years. There was pressure on Canada to step
in and help pacify Haiti but we didn't have the manpower/equipment to do
that so he just gave them half a billion to sort out their own problems.
He wanted Canada to be the chair of the Security Council at the UN and
spent many millions on that, even though it's only for a six month term
and is only of symbolic importance, and we lost that election anyway.
Every time he goes on one of his foreign trips, he gives away hundreds
of millions.

The only thing he DOESN'T like spending money on is the military. He
spent a decade dicking around with the decision about the fighter jets
and finally came back around to choosing the exact same ones Harper had
chosen but Trudeau had rejected. Meanwhile, our soldiers in Poland who
are training Ukrainians in their existential fight for survival are not
even being FED by our government while our soldiers in Latvia are having
to buy their own helmets and ammo. And forget about doing more for
veterans: the Liberals don't have money for that! But they're doing
their best to reign in costs by offering euthanasia to veterans who want
help with PTSD!

> I can remember 2014-15 when Justin Trudeau slammed Stephen Harper for
> running the national debt to a level that during COVID Trudeau
> surpassed IN A SINGLE YEAR.

I remember Trudeau swearing that we'd have a few SMALL deficits and then
return to balanced budgets by 2019; the reality was starkly different:
big deficits that increased every year. And that was BEFORE COVID
reared its ugly head! I still cringe every time I recall his declaration
that "budgets balance themselves". And then there was that time a few
years later when a business reporter asked him about fiscal policy; he
admitted he doesn't really think about such things. Well, why would he?
Parliament is the only job he's ever had aside from being a part time
drama teacher or a fulltime snowboard instructor. He's spent the rest
of his life living on his father's trust fund.

> At the start of the pandemic I knew we'd
> be in for rampant inflation since while it was clear emergency
> measures were needed that meant rolling the Bank of Canada printing
> presses and I had zero faith in Trudeau stopping the increase in money
> supply at an appropriate time - and KNEW that meant inflation at a
> level no one under age 30 has ever seen (though I remember it well
> from the 1980s).
>
As do I. I remember interest rates of almost 25% on things like car
loans and mortgages.

> While Canada was by no means unique in this, Trudeau went more
> overboard than most western leaders which is why we're currently in
> the weakest financial situation of the G7 even though at the start of
> COVID we were one of the strongest.
>
Under this massively incompetent government, what else could you expect?

>> Of our five major parties - Liberals, Conservatives, NDP, Bloc, and
>> Green (and yeah, I know it is a stretch to call the Greens a major party
>> given that they've never had more than 3 MPs and almost destroyed
>> themselves entirely with their infighting during the last couple of
>> elections), only the Conservatives are even nominally conservative when
>> they have a leader that is from the non-progressive side of the party.
>> (O'Toole ran to the LEFT of even the NDP when he was leader according to
>> several of the pundits.) So, with 4 (or more like 4 and a half) of our
>> parties being "progressive", that inclination drives practically
>> everything that happens in this country.

--
Rhino

On 2023-07-20 2:28 PM, The Horny Goat wrote:
> On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 11:11:14 -0400, Rhino
> <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:
>
>> Of our five major parties - Liberals, Conservatives, NDP, Bloc, and
>> Green (and yeah, I know it is a stretch to call the Greens a major party
>> given that they've never had more than 3 MPs and almost destroyed
>> themselves entirely with their infighting during the last couple of
>> elections), only the Conservatives are even nominally conservative when
>> they have a leader that is from the non-progressive side of the party.
>> (O'Toole ran to the LEFT of even the NDP when he was leader according to
>> several of the pundits.) So, with 4 (or more like 4 and a half) of our
>> parties being "progressive", that inclination drives practically
>> everything that happens in this country.
>
> I heard O'Toole speak in person and I don't think that's a fair
> comment though CERTAINLY 'Conservative' in Canada is a bit left of
> where the term is understood to mean in the US.
>
Even when a nominally conservative leader is running the Conservative
Party, the pundits inevitably urge them not to actually say anything
conservative-sounding for fear of alienating all the left-leaning voters
who MIGHT vote Conservative because Conservatives are more fiscally
responsible. An election inevitably starts with the Conservatives only
being very slightly conservative right out of the starting gate. I can't
remember them every going further right as the election proceeds.

> What IS true is that the last election proved the election was won and
> lost in the 905 zone (e.g. Toronto but especially the suburbs outside
> Toronto) and if a Conservative party leader is going to please Alberta
> and Saskatchewan they're going to lose the 905 voters who are so
> critical for victory.
>
And with Toronto just having opted for a Leftist mayor, my only hope is
that she will be so "progressive" that a lot of people will just wake up
and realize how counterproductive leftist policies are and finally vote
Conservative.

> One thing for sure: the next federal election will NOT be before April
> 2024 since that's when the redistribution of seats kicks in which
> annoys me since my home is moving to a new district currently held by
> the NDP. No way in HELL does Justin want to go to the people with the
> current districts since the new boundaries will shift things even more
> to Quebec and the Maritimes than now despite the fact the population
> keeps shifting westwards. It's to the point that the average BC
> district has 20-25% more voters than any Maritime district and 15%
> more than your average Quebec district.
>
> That's unjust but true - and why I've been saying for years that while
> I don't support secession, BC and AB have far greater cause than
> Quebec does.

I don't understand why someone hasn't mounted a court challenge about
that. It's just WRONG that ridings are substantially different in
population in some regions. I don't understand how it was allowed to
happen in the first place but it needs to be fought via court challenges
or lawsuits.

--
Rhino

On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 16:17:25 -0400, Rhino
<no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:

>The only thing he DOESN'T like spending money on is the military. He
>spent a decade dicking around with the decision about the fighter jets
>and finally came back around to choosing the exact same ones Harper had
>chosen but Trudeau had rejected. Meanwhile, our soldiers in Poland who
>are training Ukrainians in their existential fight for survival are not
>even being FED by our government while our soldiers in Latvia are having
>to buy their own helmets and ammo. And forget about doing more for
>veterans: the Liberals don't have money for that! But they're doing
>their best to reign in costs by offering euthanasia to veterans who want
>help with PTSD!

Not to mention paying a higher price for the F-35s than Harper had
agreed to and WITHOUT contractually agreeing to Canadian
subcontractors as Harper did.

The euthenasia thing is NOT something you can blame JT for - while one
can never know what would have happened had the story not made the
news, the government worker responsible was canned in near record time
and didn't even get the proverbial "cigarette at dawn". JT has done
plenty he DOES deserve to carry the can for but that isn't one of
them.

On Thu, 20 Jul 2023 16:27:46 -0400, Rhino
<no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:

>I don't understand why someone hasn't mounted a court challenge about
>that. It's just WRONG that ridings are substantially different in
>population in some regions. I don't understand how it was allowed to
>happen in the first place but it needs to be fought via court challenges
>or lawsuits.

True - though no doubt JT would tell them it's part of the 1867
national pact. I personally think 2 US Senators per state a bit odd
given the disparity in size between states but it seems to work well
for them. Personally I'd favor something like the German upper house
formula where larger lander (states, provinces) get more than others0
but this business about BC + AB being shorted 10-15% on their seats in
BOTH houses plus on the Supreme Court is outrageous and one of the
reasons I think Pierre Trudeau's 1982 constitution was a very bad
thing since it put through a lot of eastern Canada's "laundry list"
while leaving westerners out to dry.

It's unjust and simply shouldn't be.