A Canadian prime minister who has outstayed his welcome, persistent inflation, a government bumped and bruised by scandal and a fired-up opposition leader itching for a public showdown.
It was against this backdrop, four decades ago, that Pierre Trudeau took his apocryphal “walk in the snow” and decided not to contest the next federal election.
After a shocking upset in a “safe” electoral district and with a looming possibility of a blowout in the next federal election, Justin Trudeau’s predicament closely mirrors that of his father.
But the incumbent prime minister says he has no intention of stepping down, despite mounting evidence the public is growing increasingly weary of both his tenure – and of his Liberal party.
In late June, Trudeau’s party lost a by-election for a seat the party had held for nearly three decades, foreshadowing what pundits say could portend the collapse of the party’s stronghold in Canada’s most populous city.
I’m Indigenous and I live in northern Ontario … and I fully support our current government for what it is and most of the people I talk to around me feel the same.
It’s only a very loud minority of self serving conservatives with a huge bone to pick and an oversized chip on their shoulder that talk non-stop about how terrible this government is. I see stickers on trucks, ads on the internet, ads on tv, ads in paper, constant bombardment from everywhere in public ads saying how bad the government is … while most of the people I talk to have no real ill feelings against the government and only a handful of hateful, spiteful, angry conservatives who go around saying how terrible our country is and blaming it on one single person for no real reason.
Honestly, the only message I hear from conservatives is that they hate Justin Trudeau … some knowledgeable ones and those with a decent vocabulary can describe to me why they hate Trudeau … the rest just keep telling me we are living in a communist dictatorship and they demand their freedom back.
I agree that this isn’t a perfect government … they could be doing so much more but as they are now, they are doing fine.
It’s the conservatives I fear the most because if they achieve power, we will regress this country back to fighting between minorities/marginalized people/people of colour/indigenous and a vocal moral minority of conservatives that think they own the country.
This isn’t a political campaign for any kind of ideology … its just another hate campaign designed to make one group fight another because of??? just because they want to be hateful and fight … then after the fight is over, they’ll continue fighting with everyone and blaming problems on those they deem less than themselves.
Canada always goes through cycles like this. Imo the bigger issue is we act like we only have two parties to choose from in federal elections. At no time in our history have the NDP ever been considered a viable alternative federally … and that drives me bonkers.
You can thank first-past-the-post for screwing over smaller parties and independents.
I can also thank the Cons for screaming bloody murder every time the NDP comes up, ie: “You can’t elect the NDP! Remember Bob Rae!!!”
Always love that argument …
Bit of a rant because it’s been on my mind.
Also thank them for killing the per vote subsidy, proroguing parliament to effectively kill a coalition gov, trying to convince Canadians that coalitions are somehow antidemocratic and a seizure of power, muzzling of scientists, barbaric cultural practices hotline, robocall scandal, mandatory minimums, missing more but there was a lot to cover in those years.
I don’t know how anyone looks back at the harper years and thinks oh it wasn’t that bad, we should totally elect one of his cabinet ministers, no it totally was a taste of things to come, dude’s the chair of the idu which totally pushes this shit on a global scale.
Harper SHOULD be the Tories’ Bob Rae in terms of making them toxic to the general population, literally the reason so many people voted strategically. Maybe it’s a bunch of us not remembering, a lot of what I mentioned was some time ago, maybe it’s that a lot of Canadians anecdotally seem more interested in what’s happening stateside than their own backyard and are generally don’t pay attention to politics but it seriously concerns me.
One honestly wonders what percentage of voters do, in fact, remember what Bob Rae was like in office. I don’t think most people are all that politically aware before somewhere in their mid-teens, which means that probably almost no one born after 1980 remembers politics during the Rae years. The number’s just going to drop from here on, so I don’t think “Remember Bob Rae!” is going to remain a useful rallying cry for the Conservatives for much longer, if it is even now.
Of course, they’ll just come up with a new one.