Attaboy Justin
You were PM during an historically difficult time in Canada’s history, dealing with a global pandemic, international interference in our domestic affairs (looking at you PP and Smith and Freedumb truckers) and Trump 1.0
Thanks for the legal dope, and always being a good human being and a good Canadian
Now get back to banging Katy Perry in space.
Peace and love
“Thank you Justin Trudeau for running finally giving us a more fair and democratic voting sustem and then tossing that entire promise aside when you realized that you’d never win again if people actually felt safe to vote for what truly represented them.”
Like most centrists, at best he was vaguely tolerable. Of course, all that did was allow the party to inch further right to give us the Harper Conservatives but with red ties.
Not really what happened. Trudeau and the liberals wanted preferential ranked ballots as election reform. They formed a committee to do research and establish facts on this. The committee said they’d never get it off the ground. The other parties, and other players wouldn’t accept it and it would be a disaster. They didn’t want proportional representation, so they gave up. Their messaging was terrible, but they would have gone with ranked ballots if they thought it would be reasonably doable. It wasn’t, so instead they concentrated on other things.
Of course they wouldn’t have wanted proportional representation, look at how badly they would have gotten their asses handed to them if they did that. The country would finally have to admit that the NDP were getting votes, just not seats to match, and if that were the case then why bother voting for the Liberals?
They do not like democracy because they know how unpopular they are. In 2021 the only ads I saw from them were of Trudeau begging everyone to “unite”(strategic vote) because that’s literally the only thing they have going for them.
With proportional representation, the liberals would likely form minority governments for the foreseeable future. Small groups would be king makers. Except they wouldn’t - all they’d do was cause the government to fail and then a new election would again always give us a liberal minority.
You speak on that like the Liberals are the default. We all need to fucking stop with that crap, it’s pretty much the only reason they ever get elected at all. In 2021 the NDP well over half the votes the Liberals did and that’s with “strategic” voting. We can stop this at any point.
Most Canadians want fiscal conservatism with a safety net, and social progressiveness. The liberals sit in the center and when they get their messaging right, they tick this big box. So they do win by default. I would personally love more progressive fiscal policies, but only if I trust who’s doing it not to tank the economy, and that’s a bit rare.
And that’s exactly the problem. “Fiscal conservatism”, which really just means slashing taxes on the most rich and leaving the rest of us out to dry, is incredibly irresponsible and has never worked. If anyone trusts Carney to run our economy then they should trust someone who is at least trying to give us progressive financial policies far more. Even if they fail, they aren’t the one actively chasing the option that is guaranteed to fall apart and that means there’s a far greater chance for success.
Besides, we throw around the word “trust” and “confidence a lot with almost zero evidence that the person we don’t trust isn’t capable of doing what they promise. Yes, I trust a grizzly bear to maul me to death if I voluntarily dress up in raw meat, but that’s precisely why I do not do that!
In his speech, he committed to introducing electoral reform legislation within 18 months of forming a government. It would be based on the recommendations of a special, all-party parliamentary committee mandated to fully and fairly study alternatives to the first-past-the-post system, including ranked ballots and proportional representation.
I don’t think they even bothered to form the all party committee.
I participated in the town hall my Liberal MP ran - it was clear even then that they weren’t interested in public input or any kind of voting reform.
You may not think they did. But they did - then they dropped it, which was weak, I agree. I’m not sure proportional representation is all that great, but he should have followed through with a referendum.
You’re right!
I guess “it was hard so they gave up” is marginally better than “they thought ‘meh’ and gave up”?
Delivering on their promise, which was voting reform, wasn’t hard. They could have done what the committee recommended and gone with proportional representation. That had support with the other parties and would have delivered on their promise. But Trudeau wanted ranked ballots, and that would be hard, so we got nothing.
