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Justin Trudeau promises to resign as PM

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Re: Justin Trudeau promises to resign as PM

#171
post #4

> Trudeau, who is now answering questions from reporters, said his one regret of his premiership has been his failure to introduce electoral reform. Oh please, you had lots of time to address this and instead you've just handed us to the conservatives.

Electoral reforms are only proposed by those who think they'll benefit from them.

True. And I believe every system will eventually be gamed to some amount. You do occasionally need change. But if you were to artificially enforce some "full rewrite" reform e.g. every n decades, that reform would just end up a tug of war between sides already deep into the existing gaming, trying to increase the effect of whatever tactic their side excels in.

One candidate for a possible workaround that I've occasionally been speculating about would be an organized process where n groups are tasked with doing n "rewrites" in parallel, and then a process that somehow mixes approval and random selection to pick one. The rationale would be the hope that the low chance of a particular rewrite actually making it would add some distance, would reduce the gaming-the-system incentives. Everybody has some amount of motivation to actually design a fair system, but that's competing with incentive to make it gameable by whatever side the co-author in question is on. But that fairness incentive would not really be diminished much by writing a what-if instead of a definitive future, whereas the incentive to deliberately flaw the would-be system to make it easier to game gets lower with a shrinking likelihood of the proposal actually getting implemented.

Re: Justin Trudeau promises to resign as PM

#172
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you name a similarly wealthy country that is actually better today than it was on the date he started as a PM? I can't. Seems like something else has been going on. Potentially you could name Ireland, by becoming a tax haven, screwing over everyone else instead.

America is, especially since 2021 but nobody wants to believe it.

Depends who you are, I guess. If you’re a young person who is not financially stable enough to form a family because of high housing prices, then you would disagree. If you’re a relatively well-off person with assets like real estate and equities, then you’re quite happy. It’s all a matter of perspective.

I myself am doing quite well financially, but I am still quite unhappy with the current situation because of the devastating effects of inflation and increased housing costs specifically, have had on younger generations (despite the fact that it financially benefits me personally)

Re: Justin Trudeau promises to resign as PM

#173
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can have both. Selected the candidate and proportional presentation. Most popular party candidates get elected.

Multiple proportional systems don't require lists and provide the best outcome. Comparing FPTP to a worse system and decided FTPT is awesome while ignoring its known and widely discussed flaws surprises me. Its not really open for debate these days although people love to reject reality.

“Someone disagrees with me” = “they’re rejecting reality”

Do you realize how alienating this shit is to a centrist?

Re: Justin Trudeau promises to resign as PM

#174
post #34

Patio11 has some good coverage of Trudeau's handling of the trucker protest against the government's handling of COVID-19 [1]. Whatever you think of the truckers' position or protest tactics, any punishment for their actions ought to go through the laws and court system. Trudeau instead essentially told the banking system "You can't do business with those people, they're terrorists." Patio11's words of what happened…

The federal response was largely due to the abject failure of the city & provincial governments to enforce their laws. The city and province had plenty of tools to get rid of the protesters: noise bylaws, parking bylaws, et cetera. They failed completely, so the Federal government was forced to intervene. The federal government did not have nuanced tools to deal with the truckers so used the blunt hammers they did have.

Re: Justin Trudeau promises to resign as PM

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spend 5 minutes in Toronto Union Station during commuter hours and you'll never describe Canadians as polite again.

That's the very worst point of view you'll ever get of Canadians. Of course people in a busy train station during rush hour aren't in the best mood. Travel the country up and down, big cities and small towns, and I guarantee you will conclude that Canadians are the best people around.

French Canadians are not a welcoming people.

Re: Justin Trudeau promises to resign as PM

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First past the post is awesome. I moved from a proportional-representation country to a FPTP one (Canada) and it's so much better to have a specific individual who is my MP. Back where I was born, there's a grey and anonymous party list of people selected by extremely dubious internal party political means. I never felt the slightest bit represented; and the political process was completely opaque. Now I have a dude…

FPTP has many many flaws, one being that it trends towards a defacto 2-party system due to strategic voting, especially if only one spectrum is divided (i.e. liberal/ndp, or alliance/progressive conservatives back a few decades ago). The Anonymous Party list, and opaque process are not inherent factors on any of the replacements for FPTP, in fact the only one WITH the list was supposed to be an open list, and that wa…

What’s wrong with two parties?

Countries with multiple small parties frequently seem to collapse into political torpor where nothing ever changes.

Re: Justin Trudeau promises to resign as PM

#178
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s some impetus to stay on to bring some stability when Trump comes into office. A Shock Doctrine approach (new leader at the same time as the US gets one) is going to create an environment where a number of regressive policies will get pushed through. There’s a good chance Trump will say that he endorses Pierre Pollievre in the coming months causing a number of Canadians to turn their nose at him. This is also…

More Canadians approve of Trump than of Trudeau https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/canadians-want-a-to...

Poll is about an individual, not direction of the country.

Re: Justin Trudeau promises to resign as PM

#179
post #54

Is Canada better today then when he started as PM? I struggle to agree that it is. Housing is as bad as it has ever been and the immigration decisions seem to have been so careless that even people that would agree with immigration as a general principal are horrified by it by and large. The Canadian dollar has collapsed VS the USD. I guess it always ends bad if you stick around long enough.

Canada is definitely worse than it was ten years ago, but all of the major problems are provincial responsibilities: housing, health care, education, policing.

The largely conservative provinces have done a very good job of blaming Trudeau and immigration for problems that are entirely their own.

Re: Justin Trudeau promises to resign as PM

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While I agree with patio11's assessment here, if you were to poll the average Ottawan about the trucker protest, you'll largely get back a response of "#&$! those people", soley because they were minorly-inconvenienced by them. Canadian politics (not uniquely here) is plagued with petty squabbles. The really meaningful political and social issues don't get any airtime.

> minorly-inconvenienced 120dB train horns at 2AM in the morning in a residential area is not a minor inconvenience.

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