Canada federal election October 21, 2019 part 2

The attacks on Trudeau are escalating and now overwhelming. Any thought of bringing out Team Trudeau signage for the next election surely have been shelved.  

Just have one simple question for David Frum though.

Obviously no one political leader or party is going to address climate change adequately, but do you really believe the Conservatives are going to address one iota of the rapidly growing global warming crisis?

IDEAS

Justin Trudeau Falls From Grace

The Canadian prime minister faces a political crisis of his own devising.

The depressing squalor of the Trump era has created in liberal Americans a gnawing hunger for leaders to admire. Foreign leaders are especially likely to set liberal hearts aflutter, because they are farther away and their flaws less visible. Of all these alternative “leaders of the free world,” it is perhaps Canada’s Justin Trudeau who has enjoyed the most attention. He proclaims himself a feminist, he hugs Syrian refugees as they arrive at Canadian airports, he performs yoga, he is impossibly handsome—what could go wrong?

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Why has the scandal done so much damage?

One reason is economic. SNC-Lavalin is based in Quebec, where it employs3,400 people. The largest investor in SNC-Lavalin is the Quebec public employees’ pension fund, with a 20 percent stake. That fund has taken a beating on SNC-Lavalin’s share price—and would hugely benefit from an easy punishment of the company for its Libyan bribery.

But at the same time the Trudeau government was bending the law to protect 3,400 Quebec jobs, it was shrugging off a jobs debacle in the western province of Alberta.

Since January 2015, the province of Alberta has lost more than 130,000 jobs off payrolls—and uncounted thousands more among the self-employed. The oil-dependent province’s unemployment rate reached 7.3 percent last month.

You might have expected that the Alberta economy would revive with the improvement in the price of oil over the past two years. But that expectation has bumped into contrary government policy. Alberta is landlocked; its oil must come to market via pipeline. Pipeline capacity is utterly inadequate. The Trudeau government has professed willingness to help, but it has consistently paid more attention to the preferences of environmentalists and the economic demands of indigenous groups. The result: Alberta oil sells at an enormous discount to the world price. In November 2018, at a time when West Texas crude was selling for more than $50 a barrel, Alberta oil fetched only $11 a barrel.

In Canada, the Trudeau brand is deeply associated with the crassest favoritism of Quebec economic interests. The SNC-Lavalin affair confirms every apprehension that a Trudeau in power means second-class citizenship for western Canadians.

Yet the polls indicate that it’s not only in the West that Trudeau’s support is collapsing. And this points to a deeper problem.

Canada’s politics are perhaps the least polarized in the Western world. The Liberals successfully appeal to business-minded voters; the Conservatives effectively compete for ethnic minorities. In an unpolarized polity, personality hugely matters. Justin Trudeau marketed himself as a radically different kind of politician: artless, open, transparent, feminist.

For him to be seen browbeating an indigenous woman to protect politically wired insiders from facing the legal consequences of their wrongdoing—the reaction to that, in the words of a cover story in Maclean’s by the high eminence of Canadian political commentary, Paul Wells, is to emblazon him as “The Imposter.”

Pondering wrote:

WWWTT wrote:

Cody87 wrote 

Trudeau revived it with his personal brand and charisma.

Ya that’s bullshit. The icm used Justin and the liberals to send Mulcair and the NDP back to third place. 

If Justin was capable of pulling out a first place majority from third place, he’d really would be a genius. But because The icm did all the heavy lifting for this second rate jock, and he is too stupid to know that, combined with the inability to keep his mouth shut, he’s more than likely on his way out

Revisionist history. Mulcair and the NDP lost the election without any help from the MSM. Mulcair hit first place and lost it with his refusal to debate, his contradictory promises of balanced budget with national daycare and opposition to cannabis legalization until the last minute after which he tried to suggest that the NDP was supporting legalization all along. 

Go back a few comments where I pulled out one of your quotes about Justin going from last place to winning the election. 

Then we’ll talk about revisionist history. Actually don’t bother, I’m going to ignore you in this thread about this issue. If I don’t, I’ll only be wasting my valuable time

Sean tell me how you would spend your money to influence who wins our election. Go ahead give me the winning strategy. In the US you know the handful of states that are the important wins and all voters have the same choice for President in the state.

So go ahead tell me how the Russians can influence specific ridings in any manner that is not already being done by all our major parties. What magic bullets do Russian spies have to win elections that will override the party's campaigns?

What I remember is that before Justin Trudeau became Liberal leader the Liberals were in 3rd place. When Trudeau became Liberal leader the Liberals quickly moved into 1st place and held the lead until a few months before the election. During that period the governing Conservatives started a huge media campaign that tried to convince people that "Trudeau Just Isn't Ready." Trudeau made a few gaffes before the election and the Liberals went down in the polls but they were still in the mid 20's and still relatively close to first place. Media commentators at the time were saying that Trudeau just had to survive the campaign and especially the debates in order to do well and exceed expectations. Mulcair was even boasting he would k.o. the hapless Trudeau during the campaign. But during the campaign Trudeau was able to compete with Harper and Mulcair and chew gum at the same time and the Liberals moved into first place and went on to win a phoney FPTP "majority".

I think as soon as Trudeau became Liberal leader he was favored to become PM as long as he was able to just barely remain competitive with Harper and Mulcair. On the other hand, Harper and especially Mulcair needed Trudeau to fall on his face in order to pull out a win. Trudeau selfishly didn't oblige.

Looking at Canadian history seems to show that, all things being equal, at the federal level the Liberals have the most popularity and the Conservatives and especially the NDP depend on the Liberals to underperform in order to be competitive. Historically, Liberal and NDP fortunes seem to be the opposite of each other, so when one of them is doing well the other is going in the opposite direction. When the Liberals are doing well they win majority and minority governments and when the NDP is doing well they can move into minority territory but they are almost always still in second place behind the Conservatives. I can't remember seeing the NDP clearly in majority territory in the opinion polls. I think it's fair to characterize Canada as being a two-party system with those two parties being the Conservatives and Liberals. Of course that could change one day but that's what it's been like for 152 years and counting under our FPTP system.

Just looking at a polling chart which sure looks like the NDP led in the polls 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Canadian_federal_election

Good question

Why Has Trudeau Risked So Much for SNC-Lavalin?

Four related mysteries fuel flames of an ever more ruinous scandal.

https://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2019/04/09/Why-Has-Trudeau-Risked-So-Much-SNC-Lavalin/

The Liberal government’s crisis is a crisis of liberalism

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/04/05/opinion/liberal-governments-crisis-crisis-liberalism

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Sean tell me how you would spend your money to influence who wins our election. Go ahead give me the winning strategy. In the US you know the handful of states that are the important wins and all voters have the same choice for President in the state.

So go ahead tell me how the Russians can influence specific ridings in any manner that is not already being done by all our major parties. What magic bullets do Russian spies have to win elections that will override the party's campaigns?

 

You are not reading very well and just being oppositional for no real point.

I was complaining about the focus on the Russians.

Aren't all your straw men on fire already?

Michael Moriarity wrote:

Sean in Ottawa wrote:

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Sean tell me how you would spend your money to influence who wins our election. Go ahead give me the winning strategy. In the US you know the handful of states that are the important wins and all voters have the same choice for President in the state.

So go ahead tell me how the Russians can influence specific ridings in any manner that is not already being done by all our major parties. What magic bullets do Russian spies have to win elections that will override the party's campaigns?

 

You are not reading very well and just being oppositional for no real point.

I was complaining about the focus on the Russians.

Aren't all your straw men on fire already?

I think krop's question is a fair one. If you had the $100,000 budget you mentioned in your long post, how exactly would you spend it so as to have a decisive effect on the election? You say anyone could do it, so how would they do it exactly?

So let me ask this question: if I say a heart transplant can be done to prove that it is so I must provide a manual? Oh yes in 20 words or less?

Yes, I work in communications. I have worked on social media campaigns. One was very successful and resulted in a change of policy. It cost almost nothing.  There are many organizations that hire people paid 1/3 of this in order to influence political decisions through social media. I was once hired to do this. No, I am not providing my resume here.

The point is that organizations are all over social media becuase it doesn't work????? They spend very little compared to the effects they seek.

Here are some cold facts about media -- all types:

1) negative media moves faster, is repeated more often than positive media. Google social media and why lies move faster than truth.

2) When you do not need to be accountable -- that is not advancing an organization but are attacking -- you are free from having any accountability for truth and are much more potent. This is the reason why social media is more effective than known sources for spreading extreme fake news (as opposed to biased or bent stories).

3) Social media is like martial arts -- it does not travel far on its own power. It uses leverage of others to spread -- think viral. Think why we use this word more for social media than even disease today.

4) The construction of a seed campaign for advertising requires expertise and expensive placement. Social media is designed to be put out at low cost with not much more cost than the expertise to create and design the campaign.

I have not personally done attack campaigns in social media in politics. I loathe the tactic. I have observed them and studied them. The cost is minimal compared to any other type of campaign. A positive social media campaign is much harder and a traditional media campaign is more expensive.

Why should I have to prove this in detail when you can simply look up this easily?

Apply it to politics. Look out on social media platforms and see it in action.

Ask yourself why so many people think vaccines are all bad? This is the kind of story that flies. The cost to counter it is extraordinary. Think doing this in politics.

It is a denial of reality to suggest that this is exclusively or mainly a "Russian" threat. I have a lot less interest in proving what the Russians did than making the point that the vulnerability is real and that organizations are doing it and that the greatest threat is domestic.

When it comes to domestic let's consider the legal and security framework. There is practically none. there is no accountability and apart form outside attacks the government has no response. There is no financial limit since the government lacks the ability to even put them together and see the scale.

And the cost back to how: hire one person at $50,000 to create the campaign. Hire two at $15,000 to spread it. Buy online lists for targeting for $20,000.

You can see considerable damge. Imagine 500 others with the same financing and intent not even coordinated. Some will be true believers. Some will work for free. Some will work for political parties. Some will work for corporations.

The negative stories will be on steroids -- they will get repeated and repeated. The denials will not be able to keep up.

This is far, far, more than anything the Russians can do and it is the facts of life today.

the whole Russia scndal today is a diversion from the reality that social media means that electoral regulation in communications is out the window. If the Russians are doing it they are becuase they can and becuase everyone is. Everyone is becuase if they do not fight they lose.

It takes little money to play but the more you have the better. No way foreign countries have the means to keep up to the domestic groups that will do this or even individuals who will sacrifice all to do it. No way are our elections okay and legitimate just becuase they are being warped from inside.

Canada's Liberal Environment Minister just gave Loblaws 12 million dollars for fridges. WTF!!!

kropotkin1951 wrote:

Sorry Sean, I was merely emphasizing my point which is that the Russian influence story is an imperial red herring to deflect Canadians away from the real issues. We seem to be talking at cross purposes rather than disagreeing on much. Our state media is pushing this bullshit story but it rarely if ever talks about the actual foreign influence that permeated our media during the last federal election. I think the Russians or anyone else can try to buy influence through our media and that might influence voters I just think it is flotsam and jetsam on the media waves. We already have an abundance of foreign influence during our elections. In BC the Black Press and Postmedia and the CBC all regurgitate Fraser Institute and Canadian Taxpayers Federation propaganda. They are primarily fronts for US billionaires trying to affect our votes. Then there are the environmental groups from the US and the Israeli lobby. The former made the Liberals out to be a party that cared about the environment despite its governance history. The latter made all three major parties refuse to talk about the brutal and genocidal Israeli occupation.  Our system is awash in foreign influence and I think it would be extremely hard for any foreign actor to dramatically affect the outcome more than the Koch Brothers already do.

Yes, I think we agree on the Russians. Maybe not as completely on the foreign. I agree generally that the foreign influence is more likely from the US however, I also think that the improper influence from domestic fake news is the real threat. I am seeing little in terms of recognition of this and nothing to address it.

"The funding, capabilities and demonstrated proclivities of the western intelligence complex are far more dangerous by far than Russia/China, as is Canadian naivity about this reality."

Mobo:  Yes, this.   We are already seeing the Liberal talk about regulating social media to protect the sanctity of our elections.  No doubt legislation is on the way.   Many progressives are in favour, some even demand it.

unrelated aside -  I am quite fond of the phrase "demonstrated proclivities".    Evocative!

- written in 2015

Justin Trudeau's charm: A social movement guide to cooptation

http://rabble.ca/news/2015/10/justin-trudeaus-charm-social-movement-guide-to-cooptation#at_pco=smlrebv-1.0&at_si=5cad437aad4ce1d3&at_ab=per-2&at_pos=0&at_tot=5

For millennials in Canada, the middle class dream slips a little further away: OECD

Just 59 per cent of Canadian millennials were found to have attained middle class status by their 20s, compared to 67 per cent of their boomer parents

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau extolls the benefits of the USMCA trade pact between Canada, the United States, and Mexico in Ottawa, on October 1, 2018. 'It is an agreement that will be profoundly beneficial for our economy, for Canadian families and for the middle class.'PATRICK DOYLE/AFP/Getty Images

Tom Blackwell

April 11, 2019
8:27 PM EDT

With a federal election coming later this year, expect politicians to be talking non-stop about the middle class and its importance to the country.

The problem is, according to a new report, the middle class is shrinking — squeezed by high housing and education costs, displaced by automation and lacking the skills most valued in the digital economy.

And faring particularly badly are millennials, who are less likely to reach middle-income levels in their 20s than their baby-boomer parents, says the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development analysis.

https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/for-millennials-in-canada-the-middle-class-dream-slips-a-little-further-away-oecd

Justin had better change the channel soon, as he is quickly running out of time.

Prominent N.S. Tories considering federal bids, buoyed by Liberal troubles

https://www.nationalnewswatch.com/2019/04/12/prominent-n-s-tories-considering-federal-bids-buoyed-by-liberal-troubles/#.XLDnj5NKig5

NorthReport wrote:

This is indeed of serious concern.

Trudeau should brace for the coming Conservative wave

https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/cohen-trudeau-should-brace-for-the-coming-conservative-wave

This electoral trend may – or may not – spell trouble for the Liberals in October.

The article ignores the local conditions that led to Conservative wins such as long in the tooth Liberal governments. The world wide trend angle is really off the wall. It's an excuse to write something to get paid. 

NorthReport wrote:

Justin had better change the channel soon, as he is quickly running out of time.

I have an idea.

Take Canada's second wealthiest family, worth about 9 billion dollars, who own a company that have recently been caught price fixing bread, and brag about giving them a 12 million dollar hand out for refridgerators.

Make sure to have Catherine McKenna  do it and put a couple nodding head Liberal MPs beside her.

How Doug Ford’s budget has hurt Trudeau and helped Scheer

https://www.thestar.com/politics/political-opinion/2019/04/12/how-doug-fords-budget-has-hurt-trudeau-and-helped-scheer.html

Trudeau to visit gurdwara after government removes reference to Sikh extremism

https://www.nationalnewswatch.com/2019/04/13/trudeau-to-visit-gurdwara-after-government-removes-reference-to-sikh-extremism/#.XLIPGzBKiUk

https://twitter.com/bruceanderson/status/1117050915880620033

A sign of the times?

Liberals slow in nominating candidates while losing MPs

https://ipolitics.ca/2019/04/15/liberals-slow-in-nominating-candidates-while-losing-mps/

https://ipolitics.ca/2019/04/12/gun-control-advocates-challenge-blair-report-on-handgun-assault-rifle-bans/

NDPP wrote:

'The Russians Are Coming' To Canada...

https://www.globalresearch.ca/russians-coming/5674485

"Once again Canada's Foreign Minister, Chrystia Freeland, jumps on the anti-Russia bandwagon. At the recent G7 meeting one of the main topics was Russian interference. During that discussion Freeland stated, 'Our judgment is that interference is very likely and we think there have probably already been efforts by malign foreign actors to disrupt our democracy.'

So carry on Russia, keep messing with my head. Perhaps one day I can use that as an excuse with the 'rule of law' - by way of insanity - for the choices I make."

Same thing I said before: the government is suggesting that the greatest risk comes from foreign government entities. It is effectively dividing people into two categories -- those who are looking for the threat from a direction that is not the most likely source, while ignoring the scale and direction of the danger -- and those who in disbelieving the governments source of the threat do not believe in the threat itself.

The threat is really quite simple: we have a vulnerability in social media since people are less able to discern source, motivation and accuracy of information and the cost to intentionally move the needly when if comes to opinion is lower than ever. This is real.

The danger, given that there is still a cost, would be from those with some money, and a motivation. The motivation to change the government of Canada is most accute in those with an interest in how the country operates.

The most likely suspects: groups - with money - within Canada or the US (given their investment here and the spillover of policies here). Particularly, I am most concerned about right wing social conservatives (such as religious groups wanting to attack more secular and socially liberal people and ideas); right wing people who want to leverage hate against target groups; and those who want to force, against the better judgment of voters, more right-wing economic policies and tax cuts.

That the government is not considering the above as the primary threat, should make voters very, very afraid.

The same dynamic exists in the US and certianly I think interference capable enough of changing the next Presidential election to favour Trump is possible and likely, and would not come from either a single entity or one outseide the US. Again the concentration on the Russians as the only possible source of the threat in the US, leaves the next election there all the more vulnerable -- and the people who will be manipulated, without really fair warning.

There is way too many of these personal attacks in politics. Let's focus of the actual policies that each political party briongs to the table. Obviously a party that is government needs to be analysed on what actual legislation it has passed in the preceeding 4 years, more so than what it is proposing to do in the possible future.  

An Alberta politician's scorn for Trudeau didn't make him go away

A powerful Conservative friend held the Liberal leader in contempt. How will they get along now?

https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/cohen-an-alberta-politicians-scorn-for-trudeau-didnt-make-him-go-away 

The article in the by Andrew Cohen in the Ottawa Citizen was definitely an interesting read.  The point I found the most telling was the following, which is consistent with the main message in the G & M article Paul Wells referred to above.  In that article Trudeau was supposed to be the face of the government, while Butts was supposed to be the policy guy and Telford the person who ran the PMO.  Trudeau is not strong on policy or administration.

To my friend, Trudeau was an imposter. He was a lightweight, an amateur, a poseur. He said, my friend did, that he had faced other opposition critics in his portfolio, and he respected them all – except Trudeau. He said Trudeau never understood or grasped the portfolio, which was immigration.