Although this thread does not function under the same strict guidelines as the USPMT, it is still a general practice on TL to provide a source with an explanation on why it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion. Failure to do so will result in a mod action.
ya i agree about Singh. imo, he is properly qualifed. Other than that we have a guy who was ALMOST an insurance broker and another guy who had to drop out of the worst engineering school in Canada. sigh.
When you look at how brilliant guys like Bill Davis, Michael Wilson, Pierre Trudeau, and Jean Chretien were ... its sad seeing this collection of intellectual lightweights run the country.
Ontario has gone from great Conservative leaders like Bill Davis and Mike Harris ... to Doug Ford. Just sad. Doug Ford makes a really good city council person. But, no higher than that. He is an intellectual lightweight.
Doug Ford sorta reminds me of John Candy... when he ran for City Council of Melonville.
Yeah, SCTV is always good. It was interesting to grow up seeing politicians like Chretien run things, and just having a seemingly constant downturn in who is being fielded as candidates. And yeah, having to basically choose between Ford and Wynne, just keeps me feeling like the future of politics here is more or less destined to slowly creep towards a rather bleak future.
Say what you will about Chretien but the man ran the country on a surplus, something we haven't managed to do since, if I'm not mistaken.
I think Chretien has been the best PM Canada has had in 50 years. The guy was awesome. From 1994 to 2007 the average Canadians' real income rose 22%. I've sourced this in several previous posts. Chretien gained power with Canada mired in a long, deep recession and calls from his own party to scrap the Free Trade Deal with the USA. Instead he expanded the deal into NAFTA. He correctly adjusted the YOA which little juvenile delinquent snot faced jerks like me used to its full advantage. The Liberals like to be soft on crime. The YOA got replaced by the tougher YCJ. Of course, as a snot nosed punk I didn't like it. It was the right move for the country. The Liberal party members wanted to scrap the GST. Chretien promised to do so. When it came down to it Chretien refused to do so. Another good move. Consumption based taxes are a great way to make sure the rich pay tax.
I like how Chretien was willing to do right wing things when it was the proper thing to do. IMO, Mike Harris and Jean Chretien made Ontario the best place by far on planet earth to live. Hazel Mccallion made Mississauga the best place to live in Ontario.
The day I was born I won the lottery. I just didn't know it.
I hope there is a new generation of Mccallions , Chretiens and Harrises on the way.
On August 05 2020 08:12 JimmyJRaynor wrote: I like how Chretien was willing to do right wing things when it was the proper thing to do.
I think this is the main thing that typically defines Canadian politics for me. It's less about which "side" a policy falls under and more about what is the reasonable move to make, or at least at one point this was the case. Those lines are far more blurred when you're actually able to have people take these policies to parliament and debate their legitimacy in a constructive manner. Like scrapping GST would've been absolutely the wrong decision. It doesn't matter if it's your party's policy to change that, if you look at it, and it doesn't make sense, don't do it, you know?
Yes, its better to do the right thing for the country rather than following your party's ideological dogma.
Chretien knows what its like to be middle class and work your ass off for your money.
He was made fun of... rather than playing the victim card ...he turned it into a joke. Referring to his Bell's Palsy facial paralysis he jokingly said "i'm the one politician who won't talk about of both sides of his mouth". What a bad ass.
On August 05 2020 08:41 JimmiC wrote: Putting someone in charge because of their last name rather than their abilities and experience was clearly a mistake.
Yeah, but then again, the Conservatives more or less threw that election in my opinion. That and the NDP was in no place to really contest on a major scale at that point. It was hard to find someone to fill Layton's shoes.
Yeah, I was too young at the time to understand what was going on, but when I learned about that later on, I just couldn't believe someone would try that. Someone got paid to come up with that angle, and that's hilarious to me. Someone actually set that up, ran it by other people and everyone in the room went "Hey, that's a great attack, this will certainly resonate well in the public sphere!".
On August 05 2020 08:41 JimmiC wrote: Putting someone in charge because of their last name rather than their abilities and experience was clearly a mistake.
Yeah, but then again, the Conservatives more or less threw that election in my opinion. That and the NDP was in no place to really contest on a major scale at that point. It was hard to find someone to fill Layton's shoes.
totally that was the first campaign I followed closely so I remember him and his red book of promises and because he wrote them down, no free trade not gst. Now he does deserve some credit for realizing they were good policy and then not canceling them but Mulroney deserves more credit because he put in unpopular but great policy.
And then Kim Campbell campaign was awful, made sheerer look competent. I still remember watching the "do you want a politician who talks out the side of his mouth" and being "well that is ends it. No commercial the liberals could have ran would do as much damage to the PC or help the Liberals. You don't make a commercial that makes fun of someone's disability in Canada and expect it to help you. That was the biggest political Gaffe I can think of. Just a horrible campaign.
check your timelines carefully. ...it was already over by the time that campaign ad aired. Chretien had already won the election. This was merely the final nail in the coffin.
Prior to the controversy, the Campbell Tories were already beset by many problems; notably the recession, the unpopular GST, and their support bases moving to Reform and the Bloc. Nonetheless, the negative backlash over the television spot proved to be the final nail in the Tories' coffin. Their support plummeted into the teens, all but assuring that the Liberals would win a majority government.
The way Chretien reacted to it was perfect. Rather than cry about how he is this big victim of the horrible terrible bigoted Right wing PCs ... he turned it into a joke. Pretty damn brilliant.
On August 05 2020 08:41 JimmiC wrote: Then he only canceled the helicopter deal (which he took huge penalties and then bought them later costing the tax payers hundreds of millions.) He then just rode the economic boom that free trade brought along with full coffers from GST.
along with Mike Harris he created the fertile ground for an economic boom after a long brutal recession. The ultra low interest rate policies of Allan Greenspan also helped a lot. The Bank of Canada had to follow suit with similar low interest rate policies.
In fairness to Mulroney the recession didn't only happen in Canada. It gripped much of the western world.
On August 05 2020 08:41 JimmiC wrote: I mean he got in based on his red book of promises of getting rid of the free trade GST and helicopter deal that mulroney put in.
he promised to renegotiate the FTA which he did when NAFTA negotiations began.
On August 07 2020 09:51 JimmiC wrote: Back to the tit for tat with tariffs , as Trump does worse and worse in the pools I suspect we will see more of this in a effort to distract. He lives to be fighting with as many as counties as possible.
Since March, Mulroney has accused the United States of acting like a "tin-pot dictator" in trade restrictions taken against Canada and has accused the European fishing industry of "raping" Canada's Grand Banks fishing grounds.
The US and Canada are constantly squabbling over the details of whatever trade deal they have in place. Today's click-bait media tries to make it seem like it is some giant never-before seen crisis. It ain't. Trump's behaviour is nuttin special. Don't tell him that though...
On August 07 2020 09:51 JimmiC wrote: Back to the tit for tat with tariffs , as Trump does worse and worse in the pools I suspect we will see more of this in a effort to distract. He lives to be fighting with as many as counties as possible.
Since March, Mulroney has accused the United States of acting like a "tin-pot dictator" in trade restrictions taken against Canada and has accused the European fishing industry of "raping" Canada's Grand Banks fishing grounds.
The US and Canada are constantly squabbling over the details of whatever trade deal they have in place. Today's click-bait media tries to make it seem like it is some giant never-before seen crisis. It ain't. Trump's behaviour is nuttin special. Don't tell him that though...
The national security angle has really never been done before apart from Trump. You try justifying that Canada is a national security threat against the USA.
On August 07 2020 09:51 JimmiC wrote: Back to the tit for tat with tariffs , as Trump does worse and worse in the pools I suspect we will see more of this in a effort to distract. He lives to be fighting with as many as counties as possible.
Since March, Mulroney has accused the United States of acting like a "tin-pot dictator" in trade restrictions taken against Canada and has accused the European fishing industry of "raping" Canada's Grand Banks fishing grounds.
The US and Canada are constantly squabbling over the details of whatever trade deal they have in place. Today's click-bait media tries to make it seem like it is some giant never-before seen crisis. It ain't. Trump's behaviour is nuttin special. Don't tell him that though...
On August 07 2020 09:51 JimmiC wrote: Back to the tit for tat with tariffs , as Trump does worse and worse in the pools I suspect we will see more of this in a effort to distract. He lives to be fighting with as many as counties as possible.
Since March, Mulroney has accused the United States of acting like a "tin-pot dictator" in trade restrictions taken against Canada and has accused the European fishing industry of "raping" Canada's Grand Banks fishing grounds.
The US and Canada are constantly squabbling over the details of whatever trade deal they have in place. Today's click-bait media tries to make it seem like it is some giant never-before seen crisis. It ain't. Trump's behaviour is nuttin special. Don't tell him that though...
The national security angle has really never been done before apart from Trump. You try justifying that Canada is a national security threat against the USA.
meh, Trump is just making that claim to impose trade restrictions.
The US did a non stop stream of those things to impede trade from 1990 to 1992 ... with the ink barely being dry on the FTA.
And if lumber, cars, and culture are not enough, the proposed three-way trade deal between the US, Canada, and Mexico has the entire anti-free trade movement - including the Council, unions, and the opposition politicians - up in arms.
"Corporate colonialism," is what David Barret the trade critic for the socialist New Democratic Party calls the developing North American Free Trade Agreement.
Mulroney said Bush was acting like a a "tin pot dictator". The rhetoric from the NDP then was ""Corporate colonialism" .... LOL. Today Trumps says Canada is a "security threat". . ok man.
I don't recommend getting too excited over the most recent frictions.
The concerns 30 years ago Canadian culture being eroded turned out to have some justification. It has happened. However, it appears every country's culture has this problem with the allure of US culture. For example, Korea continues to become more "westernized" and my korean friends over 35 with kids in their teens are unhappy at how engulfed in US consumer culture their kids are. It isn't just young Canadian kids being assimilated...
I don't really have a '"silver bullet" solution for protecting Canada's culture. I do think a very strong economy with plenty of opportunity for the poor and lower middle class to become middle class and upper middle class is Canada's best bet when it comes to preserving its culture.
On August 19 2020 12:07 CorsairHero wrote: Our new finance minister has no background in finance or business Thanks Justin
To be fair, neither does the Conservatives' finance critic. Pierre has a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations.
At least the new finance minister has been the lead on some of the most important policy files for the the entire time the liberals have been in power.
She's a powerhouse of a minister, and she's delivered on some massive files. I think she'll be fine in her position. The issue with the Finance office is, from all I've seen in the news, in big part also the political staff. She'll put them in line or drop them since she's supremely loyal to the party.
EPT
. ok man. 
