It’s happening all across the west
“Every crisis is an opportunity”
– Every single slimy “liberal” politician who is really just a posh autoritarian with a toolbox of Identity Politics slogans.
Actually, this is not about Canada, this is about the world. And it’s frightening: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=Fd-_VDYit3U&ra=m
I actually voted for Mark Carney out of pure fear of what PP would do. But I had no idea it would still turn out this bad.
Overall, I supported Carney as well, last election (but voted Green). But I said at the time, here in this community, that although I completely agreed with his economic and fiscal policies, the jury was still out regarding his social and humanitarian policies. If you think back, Carney ran almost entirely on his financial policies, and remained silent on social policies.
Fiscal policies? The guy is basically gutting everything in favor of his rich buddies. You think Doug’s fatass privatization of healthcare is alone to him.
What turned out so bad?
- Bill C-22… unwarranted surveillance of Canadians
- Promoting environmental destruction through increased O&G production
- Proposed reforms to the Access to Information act to reduce transparency
- Promoting war in Iran
Shall I continue?
And a whole lot of other shit, too.
Mark Carney has spent 24-7 meeting with European countries, creating new trade deals, alleviating the dependence we have on the country that is calling us the “51st state”. I’m down with that :)
He also has been cozying up to the most insane US companies, too. His problem with the US is only that he wants Canada to remain nominally independent while still basically being a fully owned asset of US corporate interest.
In short, its Trump’s wording he is opposed to more than anything. The moment the fucker dies is the moment it is business as usual in his mind.
It doesn’t help my hope for things that, every time Carney clearly represents the owner class over the working class, I see people in comment sections talking about they “don’t like it but you gotta get things done!”. No, this is bad and should not be excused, and why do we always have to have excuses and patience for centrist and right-wing bullshit, which has still yet to show any real functionality, but we won’t even try being progressive despite the innumerable examples of progressive policy working all over the world? Even Mamdani is making it work in the US and we act like Carney needs to allow unreviewed distruction of our environment to benefit O&G companies or the whole country will up and die in only a couple years’ time.
I’m so tired of this crap. I’m so tired of us willfully throwing away our rights and self-respect just to get leaders who will ignore us at every possible turn. I’m sick of people saying that the left will be like Soviet Russia while everything they describe as guaranteed with progressivism is literally happening, openly, in front of them under conservative governments(like our current one, too). Degrading our democracy almost feels like it’s still democratic because so much of the population seems perfectly happy to watch it happen.
Exactly this! A great example is when the Alberta UCP flat out told renewable energy companies that they just were not allowed to do business in Alberta. Straight up, in your face central planning. Free market indeed…
I am not far left enough to say communism is the right goal, yet, but I am further left than saying we need socialist reforms. I am from Saskatchewan so I can see the benefits of psuedo-socialized markets (think phone and internet with Sasktel sticking it to the big 3) I just wish the rest of the province could see it to. If Saskatchewan can see it and really start celebrating it maybe the rest of Canada could as well.
I’m 100% behind you with this.
And every time I mentioned how it was a bad idea to vote for Carney and how bad he is, I kept being downvoted and then people comment “yeah but we would’ve has Poilievre otherwise.”
No we wouldn’t. A lot of NDP ridings turned red because of this. But people should have voted for the NDP. With them as a strong opposition, we would still be in a better position in a minority big C Conservative government than we are right now with a majority small c conservative government.
Carney is a corporatist. He knows how to sweet talk investors to gain their trust like any CEO can bullshit people into buying their stock. And he’s done that with all of Canada.
Be careful what you wish for…
we would still be in a better position in a minority big C Conservative government than we are right now with a majority small c conservative governent.
You might not have been aware of the full stakes and nuances of the situation in late 2024, early 2025. At around December 2024, Trudeau was so unpopular that Poilievre was in clear majority territory, not minority if an election were held then.
This is more a matter of opinion, and I agree what we have is not a great situation, but do you really think that having Pierre in charge, with a cabinet of emboldened racists and a coalition of a group of conservative Liberals would be better than this? Metaphorically I see it as having Pierre in the driver’s seat with Liberals with them in the front and the NDP backseat driving in the opposition, versus Mark in the front, with the NDP and the Cons together in the back with PP unable to find a compelling message.
Plus, getting Lewis to unapologetically push left-wing ideas for us I think is a better strategy than Singh’s centre-left conciliatory approach that had exhausted its usefulness. The orange wipeout was, rightfully IMO, a wakeup call for the Canadian left.
And Canadians don’t have the same excuses to not do anything about it unlike the muricans. Their healthcare is not tied to their jobs.
So I can tell you haven’t been poor recently.
Their healthcare is not tied to their jobs.
sure, if you dont care about your teeth, eyes, mental health, physiotherapy…
All tied to employment…
And before anyone jumps in here with “at least not as bad as america!!!”… thats exactly the kind of low bar thinking that landed us in this situation…
And before anyone jumps in here with “at least not as bad as america!!!”… thats exactly the kind of low bar thinking that landed us in this situation…
Well, look at the bright side: at least you don’t yet have to compare your country with North Korea like Americans do to make it seem less bad.
OK. I broke and dislocated my shoulder in 2024. I was in emergency for a while. My open reduction and internal fixation on the left proximal humerus was scheduled fairly quickly. I didn’t have to take out a mortgage for the surgery. I wasn’t financially ruined to get the use of my arm back. If you want teeth, eyes, mental health, and physiotherapy? Be prepared to pay way higher taxes! Your choice….
We’re either paying for it though our job, out of pocket, or through taxes. It’s not free. I’d much rather have it come out of taxes to reduce the middle men just profiteering from our system.
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Yes. I had one on my ankle last year. I think I paid $200. That wasn’t even to the hospital, is was for my crutches and aircast at the pharmacy.
No, but it is tied to politics. What treatments Canadians have access to is determined by unaccountable appointed bureaucrats at the ministries of health.
As an example, GLP-1 is only available to Canadians who are diagnosed with diabetes. It is not available for general weight loss.
And in the U.S. GLP-1 is only available to U.S. citizens who have enough money to pay for the exorbitant prices. What’s your point?
You can get the prescription for weight loss in Canada, especially if your current weight puts you at risk. I already know a few people taking the generic for this purpose. Insurance companies are the ones that refuse to provide coverage for anything other than diabetes treatment.
In the US anyone can decide they want to take the drug and just go to one of the websites that advertise all over the place and get a prescription with no issues.
In Canada, if your current weight does not put you at risk but you would still prefer to lose some weight, you’ll have to convince your doctor who may refuse you.
I can’t tell if you think this is a good thing (it is) or a bad thing.
The two aren’t comparable. You really want Doug Ford to decide what and who can be eligible for what treatments, only to have it overturned by the next premier?
Unelected, nonpartisan bureaucracy is what prevents those swings.
But you’re not wrong - Ford is smothering healthcare, as seen by the hospitals struggling with finances right now. Its a problematic sign if most of the major hospitals are all struggling at the same time. Less funds mean poorer service and less availability, and that part is directly driven by politics in the longrun.
You really want Doug Ford to decide what and who can be eligible for what treatments, only to have it overturned by the next premier?
No, the total opposite. I think the government regulation of medicine should be limited to ensuring a drug’s safety, but not efficacy. This was the regime we had decades ago that gave us some of the most useful medications we still have, such as NSAIDs, antibiotics, and many vaccines.
Let me, an individual, decide (along with my doctor) which drugs I should or shouldn’t be taking.
but not efficacy
that’s how you get snake oil
and chemotherapy
you make an adulterous and valid point. godsdamn curing ourselves by poisoning ourselves to death.
Plenty of that out there already, see the supplements category.
What removal of efficacy requirements does in reality is open the door to a lot more off label use.
Excellent article. Thanks for posting.
Trudeau’s failure to bring in proportional representation will be a missed opportunity with severe consequences that most don’t fully appreciate.
Trudeau did not fail to bring in proportional representation. He campaigned with the intention of bringing in ranked balloting. Instead of forcing it through when he could, he sent it to committee where no consensus was reached. Instead of compromising with a small improvement the NDP flat out refused anything but proportional representation. With ranked balloting the NDP would consistently win more seats than they do now and we would have more minority governments where compromising would result in more progressive legislation.
This this this. So much this. Canadians do not understand just how catastrophic of a fuckup that was. The consequences of that have not yet been truly felt but it will be horrendous when they are. Canada’s electoral system is a goddamn joke and, in my opinion, is barely even a democracy at all because of it.
Just like the US, we are one 51% vote away from a bad actor gaining absolute power and tearing down everything Canadians have known and loved. Hell, even right now we have a majority government that the people did not vote for.
Our system is better than the US’s system. By just a hair but it is better, but yes we need election reform.
Literally the argument the article is criticizing. Don’t compare one country to another like that. Sure you can take specific examples of how something doesn’t work in certain circumstances, but doing a direct compare just to say “At least we’re not as bad as ____” is ultimately defeatist.
51% vote? More like 38-40% vote. That is all a party typically needs to be able to get a majority government.
Yeah he might’ve fucked the whole country on that one, but now he’s exclusive with Katy Perry so I guess he learned his lesson. /s
Democracy in the entire west is eroding.
The single factor that is leading to the breakdown of “democracy” is the extreme polarization of the population into two adversarial camps. The more entrenched in their ideology the sides become, the more antagonistically aggressive they become towards each other. Expecting that democracy could survive in this quagmire is like expecting a devout religion to be democratic.
While you are correct, I kinda hate this argument because it ascribes equal blame on both sides as if giving up on human rights is a reasonable political position. The better way to describe it is that the Nazis are too comfortable taking their masks off
Does it ascribe blame that way? I don’t think saying “You’re too extreme in your views” necessarily means “You think people shouldn’t have to suffer” and equating them is ultimately going to lead to the exact polarization the commenter is talking about.
You don’t defeat fascism by becoming a “good” fascist.
That would only hold water if the left and the right were equally represented in the Western world. The Overton window currently sits somewhere odd Zohran Mamdani and literal Nazis. Other than odd fringe groups with less political sway than a groundhog in spring, there’s nothing approaching left wing fascism in the Western world.
The polarization is a product, a symptom, not a cause. Look at the economic processes affecting everyone. They drive the political processes, part of which is polarization. Simple example - if I can’t find a job as a young guy, see no feasible way to move out of my parents’ basement, therefore have little chance to court a girl and have a family of my own, I’d be pretty angry and looking for the cause of my misery. Seeing all these new people on the street that weren’t here a few years ago would be an obvious candidate. The axes on which polarizarion occurs aren’t new and unnatural, and people have found the same explanations for their misery in the past, way in the past. Not all of those explanations are valid of course, but the economic misery driving to them is real and the march towards polarization won’t stop until the misery recedes.
Read what I said carefully. I said the breakdown of democracy was due to polarization. I did not say what the cause of the polarization was. The American system of democracy, and to a large extent our system, is based on an adversarial winner-take-all, loser-maybe-next-time system. An election simply determines who will be the authoritarian dictator for the next election cycle. But now, the two sides have completely vacated the middle, leading to a complete polarization (no middle ground) of their policies. Thus, no matter who wins, democracy loses, because it is no longer governance of all the people, for all the people, by all the people, but governance of the winning side, for the winning side, by the winning side. The ideals, goals.ideology of the other side are completely ignored.
Okay I see what you’re saying on the electoral system, and I don’t disagree, but do you really think that the winning side are actually representing the voters of the winning side? Cause it looks to me (and I think there a good reasons for) that not only the winning side are not representing the losing side, they’re no longer representing the winning side’s own voters. I don’t know if you agree with this but if you do, don’t you think that’s a more fundamental break in the democratic system than the side-wise representation problem?
This is exactly the wrong application of empathy to this topic. The last group of people to be trying to excuse through empathy is racist young men who feel aggrieved entitlement to women’s bodies. It is good to empathize to the point of understanding their motivations, but their conclusions are an appeal to privilege, not an excusable and “natural” human reaction.
Young men who resort to fascism (we’re not gonna pretend racism and misogyny isn’t fascist at this point) because they don’t have good jobs and a guaranteed wife are doing so because they feel the system should guarantee them these things, has failed to deliver it, and they want to use this ideology to reassert what they view as their natural spot on the hierarchy. They are not sympathetic people, they are fascists who would rather commit violence than give up that privilege.
Whatever feeling you have for them that amounts to “well, I used to think that and I could see myself failing to change” or “they don’t know any better,” is misrecognizing your shared internalized values with these men as a natural human response. It is not, these are socialized values that benefit a select group of people disproportionately; which means they are most certainly not against harming others and any suffering this system has caused them is not making them question those values for fear of harming the rest of us.
Of everyone who suffers under this system and commits to actions that people do not empathize or sympathize with enough, these men are not the ones to spend our time being gentle with. They’re a problem, they’re going to keep being a problem, and the overwhelming majority of them will never change because they are already in a system that is built to reproduce that privilege. Racism would not be an “obvious candidate” to explain their discontent if they did not already feel entitled to certain things by merit of being white and Canadian.
You can empathize with people and still accept that they are harmful.
Edit: Before anyone says anything this, I don’t care if you think men don’t get enough consideration. They do, and there are many, many more groups of people who do not. If you are a man and angered by something like this, you better bring some actual proof that you’ve read about gender studies, sociology, or at least about vulnerable groups in this country if you want me to take anything you say seriously.
Swap the young guy for a young girl. Many girls also share the desire to court guys, or girls, have intimate relationships, maybe kids. That also tends to need moving out of parents’ basement (in this society). Girls also understand and feel the power of the labour market as they need to interact with it in order to obtain the entry level jobs needed to get on the path towards fulfilment of those desires. The labour market literally tells them that the existence of more people competing for the same jobs means they aren’t getting those jobs. We don’t need racism to conclude that. The capital system’s built-in dynamics tell us so. There’s amount of anti-racism that can paper over some of that. Once the prospects of achieving those desires get dim enough, I don’t think there’s enough anti-racism to do it.
What I’m saying here isn’t that indignation towards immigrants or any other others is the only option people can take. I’m saying the economic system, without other intervention points people towards that conclusion. Obviously intervention like raising people’s class consciousness can replace it and I think it’s durable, and perhaps even strengthened as people’s economic prospects decline.
Now you could say that wanting these things is a product of the privilege of being a Canadian born to Canadian parents that have a basement. And to that I’d say - yes it is. And I don’t think people should feel entitled to any less because decent food, shelter and the ability to have the chance[1] to live a decent life with someone, and procreate if they and the someone wants to, is the very lowest of standards people should require from a system in which all of us produce as much wealth as we do. The Canadian born to Canadian parents that have a basement, as well as the “others.”
[1] Chance, not a guarantee as no one is entitled to a partner, but one should be entitled to the material conditions allowing to attempt finding one.
“It’s the same if it was a woman*” further demonstrates the issue here. No, women don’t subscribe to racist values and actions at the same rate as men, even if everyone here is socialized within a white supremacist culture. Why? Because they do not benefit from that system in the same way white men do, because they are subordinated more than white men are already by merit of being women. No, that is not the same thing as saying women do not internalize racist culture, they do, but the way that they do does not even come close to fascists – the overwhelming majority of which are men. The labour market doesn’t tell them that, and it isn’t some “lost cause,” (hope you understand the irony of applying that narrative here) it is the consequence of the settler-colonial foundations of this country. They understand that it is an option because they understand that Canada is fundamentally white supremacist and is going to exploit them less than vulnerable groups. Just because you can empathize with those people because you have similarly been raised in a white supremacist culture does not mean that their choice to remain racist is sympathetic. There is an amount of anti-racism that could challenge that, which is any, but the ultimate goal of anti-racism is to completely deconstruct this system for this exact reason. It’s also worth noting that you think this only applies to immigrants when this racism is readily turned on any racialized peoples within Canada as well as indigenous peoples and First Nations, strange that a sympathetic narrative for these people would have to ignore the effects of their actions in order to be more believable.
You have once gain naturalized the very specific and intentional conditions of this system with human nature. You think that fascism is a human respnse, but its logic is entirely dependent on prexisting liberal, capitalist, and settler-colonial values to exist and is oriented around reinforcing those values. These are also not “girls” and “guys,” these are adults who have the responsibility to change once they are made aware of their harmful behaviour. Even if this was reflexive in a natural way and not a socialized way, they still have the responsibility to change and their choice to remain racist makes them a threat to everyone else’s safety and wellbeing; sympathizing with them is saying that saving an actively harmful person is more important than helping their victims. Again, it is right to empathize with them and understand why they make the choices they make, but it is wrong to make that an excuse to misrecognize the harm they intend. Everyone in Canada today is offered worse conditions than previous generations, that isn’t special to them and it isn’t like other groups in this country haven’t had similar experiences without having racism as an option and without resorting to violence.
This is not a failure of the system to regulate the economy in an effective way, everyone in positions of power understand that this is the consequence of neglecting privileged workers and petty property owners. They expect them to react this way because they have been socialized to think this way, which again points to how it isn’t “natural.” Race is a class in this system, and they are responding in solidarity with maintaining the privilege of that class; however distorted that is from the material reality of class dynamics and struggle. If you’re truly anti-capitalist and anti-racist, these people are not your friends.
I think you’re both misunderstanding what I’m trying to say and adding 80% auxiliary construction which I don’t find helpful as it adds a lot that I did not say, did not imply and do not agree with. Feels borderline bad faith. I’m trying hard not to take it that way. Hence why am responding.
For example nowhere I imply that the responses to the labour market are natural. The capital system isn’t natural. Yet, that doesn’t mean the system doesn’t create material incentives for people to act in specific ways. I don’t naturalize anything. I take the system as it is and ask how would certain changes in the material conditions affect some other variable.
I’m using the guy and the girl as an example of one part of society in order to explore how capitalism affects them in this narrow context of drivers of polarization. Not as a target to moralize their actions as just or unjust, or emparhize with or anything like that. Side note - if this historically privileged class is struggling, everyone else has it worse.
The last thing I’m gonna say is - I disagree that the racist response to the labour market is primarily a product of the settler-colonial nature of this country. I think that colonial nature of the country plays a role in addition to it but is not primary. Am of immigrant descent from a place that has not touched settler-collonialism and people facing this in my community (in Canada) who can’t find jobs that are now filled by newer immigrants are making the same conclusions. Heck this effect is now starting to show up back home after capital recently began importing temporary foreign labour without a labour hsortage, because they finally figured out they can depress wages this way. It’s a post-“communist” country so the capitalist class is fairly new and it’s still learning the ropes.
Again - I am not moralizing the new or preexisting workers. Everyone is trying to get by and feed their kids.
You guys always pull out “bad faith” when you don’t like how visible your underlying values are in what you say.
I’m not saying it’s wrong to look at these groups, I’m saying you’re looking at them wrong because you lack a deeper understanding of how this system came to be and why it functions the specific way it does. Whether you intend to do what you do is not what defines the consequences of what you do. When you tried to construct a sympathizing narrative, you didn’t talk about any vulnerable groups, you didn’t talk about indigenous peoples, you only talked about the most privileged groups of people in this system. Yes, that says something more than what you want the words to say, and you are also responsible for that.
“Racism isn’t because of settler-colonialism because I am a settler and other settlers like me engage in racism.” I can’t think of a clearer example than this to demonstrate this misunderstanding. Whiteness is a fluid category, it does not literally refer to the melanin content and physical attributes of a person’s body, it is about privilege. White Europeans (Irish, Italian, French, Greek, Slavic, etc.) were historically racialized and marginalized incidentally in this country, experienced systemic disadvantage, but certainly do not experience racism today; black and African Canadians still do. There are also differences in privilege delineated by gender, sexuality, ability, and class within those groups, that does not mean racism isn’t specific to some and only benefits some. Your being an immigrant means you are potentially open to discrimination along those same lines, but also means you participate in racism and settler-colonialism by merit of your privilege over First Nations and indigenous peoples; whom are also racialized. Racism exists to naturalize the subordination of others, it literally came into being through settler-colonialism, and being a racialized settler does not exempt you from benefiting from that racism.
You are taking effects as causes, and yes, by dojng that you are naturalizing these things as inevitable human reactions that cannot be curbed. Whether you want to or not, that projects a moral meaning onto those things.
I don’t know who “you guys” are and now I think this is definitely bad faith. I don’t even disagree with a lot of what you said in general. But deliberately ignoring parts of what I said in order to focus on others whose meaning changes when ignoring those parts, putting yet more words I did mot say or imply in my mouth tells me we’re done here.
Not a new thing even remotely. That isn’t the “single factor,” these are the inevitable conditions that liberal-capitalist systems produce. They are fundamentally organized around the subordination of othered groups of people to the benefit of a privileged group(s), which means the value of human life or any life is not a real consideration. Polarization like this appeared in the late nineteenth century as well (Progressives and Populists), and similarly people looked at that as the cause of problems and not the result of a system that will never adopt an idealized form of democracy as that would inevitably mean a group of exploited people have power within that system.
What you are identifying is a particularly energetic moment in political rhetoric that has been very effectively proliferated through corporatized media (not just social but yes, social media) and internet services. To suggest there are “two camps” depends on erasing the variability of people’s material and social interests in politics, which just works to the benefit of privileged groups and their political interests. I’d hardly call Liberal voters the same thing as NDP voters or, god forbid, someone who understands the liberal legal and political system as only a part of our politics and not the entirety of it. The split I figure you’re thinking about is between Liberals and Cons (which can be understood as “liberals and conservatives,” “progressive and traditional,” “fascists and republicans,” but is really just oriented around party politics and not actual ideological differences) and, go figure, they happen to be ideologically aligned under neoliberalism. Their differences are a consequence of different marketing and rhetoric strategies based on target demographics and regions.
Cons do better in the counties with mostly white settlers who have poor political literacy, a lack of cultural diversity, and a high economic dependency on extractive industry and agriculture. So, they use rhetoric that enforces “traditional” values and relies on an elitist crisis narrative that constructs local economic decline or struggle as a consequence of decadent wealthy people in positions of power who have corrupted the country, i.e. the only other large party: Liberals. Liberals tend to do better in cities and suburbs, particularly affluent ones, and use rhetoric that evokes welfare liberal ideas of “progress” and a balance between private and public spending to address a crisis in market forces and bad actors within the system, namely Conservatives. They must produce certain outcomes to maintain that image, and of course their different interests means they attract different financial supporters with their own imperatives that factor into policy-making. So, they sometimes push different policies, but usually their motivations and outcomes are ideologically compatible.
The result is the construction of this adverserial narrative that really just refers to what the most privileged groups associated with voting trends in each party are concerned about. Fascists are particularly energetic, and both parties here in Canada have readily embraced that energy to their ends. PP pushes transphobia and racism, Carney plays on the anxiety caused by it to frame the same neoliberal policies as acts of self-reliance and sovereignty. To even suggest this system was democratic to begin with is also deeply ahistorical and difficult to defend rationally. You could certainly say there’s “two teams” in that there really is just capitalism and its supporters and then people who are invested in the value of human life, but then the politics just melts into one team which is “capitalism’s supporters.” I’m sure you can understand how that would be reductive as well.
Please, do not buy into narratives that simply these issues; simplicity is easier for them to control.
They all are… That’s the actual goal as we move forward to a new age of complete human ownership via technology attached to government.
The idea of Nation is transitioning out.
Hopefully Klanada figures it out before the fascist machine turns them 51.
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