Canadian Politics, Federal, Provincial or otherwise.

[Ollumhammersong]

Now full disclosure, I have a restricted firearms license, as do many people I know and I disagree with c-21 for a bunch of reasons. But my personal feelings about which guns should or shouldn't be considered legal is secondary to the legal concerns I have about how c-21 is being rammed through on the whim of the prime minister with no care for the normal parliamentary process or allowance for debate.

[Ollumhammersong]

Well to the surprise of absolutely no one in Ontario, Ford just won a third term in Queen's Park. The fact he's maintained three consecutive majority governments is kinda an impressive electoral feat.

[Al Terego]

As a Canadian who came from a country with party-list proportional representation, the skewness of the North American "first past the post" system never fails to astonish me.

Looking at the result of the Ontario elections:

Party	%votes	seats	%seats	ratio
PC	42.97	80	64.52	1.50
NDP	18.55	27	21.77	1.37
Liberals	29.95	14	11.29	0.38
Greens	4.83	2	1.61	0.33
Independent	1.08	1	0.81	0.35

[Ollumhammersong]

Ya FPTP isn't a great system but it's what we've got right now.

Funnily enough Truedeau ran on electoral and senate reform as two major promises of his original 2015 campaign. They were a major reason I voted liberal back then. I was very hopeful that with a majority liberal government that reform might happen. But alas they were two of the first campaign promises to be cast aside when the dust settled.

[Ollumhammersong]

I say this because while there's no garuntee that provincial governments would have followed suit for electoral reform. It is highly likely they would feel rhe pressure to do so if the feds did it first  and it was well received by rhe public. It would put pressure on the provinces to adopt it in turn

[Al Terego]

I remember the 2007 Ontario referendum about electoral reform and bemoan it's failure to pass.
BC also had several attempts.
It appears that the average Canadian prefers the FPTP system for some reason.

[Ollumhammersong]

It's familiar. Again, any vote or election is a Referendum on the status quo, and while FPTP isn't perfect. It's not the worst most terrible democractic system that has ever existed as many internet videos like to claim. 

It's not always perfectly representative, but it's also not horribly unfair despite many aformentioned internet claims. It's worked for nearly 170 years of this country's existence and a lot of people just don't see any necessity in changing it. Nor is there any great sense of urgency to do so. 

Plus, what system to we switch to? there's multiple options, they each need to be weighed and debated publicly and in turn voted on. If the ruling party just picks a system they happen to like (lets say Alternative voting) at the time than it will inevitably be called into question why they picked that and not another option (like single transferable) and etc, etc.  

TLDR, FPTP is not perfect but it works, and changing it is a big hassle most don't want or need to deal with. Our democracy isn't in danger of collapsing any time soon and most average people feel it's 'fair enough'. Or they're simply to apathetic to get involved in the conversation. 

[Al Terego]

It works badly.

Other then the flaws described here, I would argue that Duverger's law exacerbates the polarization and the "us vs them" mentality (which you can see in the US).

[Ollumhammersong]

While it's certainly exacerbating political tribalism in the US, we're not the US. We have many other factors and differences in our system that prevent some of the big problems the congressional system falls prey too. 

I would argue US political tribalism is far more to do with the deeply entrenched 2 party setup they have, which is almost impossible for them to shift away from because of how their congress/senate/whitehouse divide works. 

We have a much more diverse political spectrum, yes the NDP rarely gets into power, but they do still often get a voice at the provincial level and sometimes get their way at the federal level too with minority and coalition governments. We don't have a two party system despite what it often seems and we aren't heading in that direction. minority parties like the NDP and Bloc do get more of a say than people realize, especially as minority governments are a common thing here. 

Like, i'm not saying that FPTP is perfect, god knows it has flaws and I would like to see the move to some sort of different system, not sure which would be a better fit for a Westminster parliament. But the flaws of FPTP aren't so egregious that the average Canadian feels like the system needs to be ripped up and renovated. 

Because there are also flaws to consider with a variety of different alternate voting systems. Nothing is perfect. Parallel voting can lead to discontent and resentment as it essentially creates a 2 tier government. MPs who are elected by constituents that average people actually know and like, and those merely picked for party loyalty but have the same, sometimes more power for some reason. 

STV sounds good, but can be just as unrepresentative as FPTP only in the other direction as it can often over-inflate the power of smaller parties that very few people voted for and cause divisions as we see it Ireland where members of the same party often do end up running up and campaigning against each other in the same riding, which leads to all sorts of political fun and a hyper fixation by candidates on smaller local issues at the cost of focusing on larger national level problems. 

And PR can and often does just remove the link between an MP and their constituents because they don't have to campaign or give a shit on a local issues. They can just ignore their constituency because their job isn't really dependent on the opinions of that constituency. A lot of Canadians like having an MP with a constituency office they can call or walk into to bitch and moan. The city of Hamilton is especially infamous for rebelling against who it perceives as parachute candidates foisted on then by Ottawa or Queen's park. We like voting for, and being represented by local guys and gals. 

Plus I would argue our system was never intended to be perfectly proportional, if anything it was intended to be somewhat slanted. If that was true we would need to radically reform many details, such as the number of ridings, to properly balance for population. Right now we have ridings with over 110K people and ridings with as few as 40k all over the country. Ontario alone would gain massive numbers of extra seats, and between us and Quebec that's nearly 60% of the population and we alone could elect whatever government we want and fuck everyone else. 

But again, I would argue this is also by design. Yes FPTP and our distribution math over represents rural areas, but the rural areas are often in danger of being ignored and overlooked otherwise. The idea that democracy must be perfectly proportional and 100% representative is kinda more of a modern idea. 

Where as when these systems and their rules were originally designed (and often when they're adjusted even today) they are often the result of a lot of concessions and 'eh good enough'

[Ollumhammersong]

Well shit, Ford actually did it. Just announced the 25% energy surcharge today. With the threat to up it to 50 in April or sooner.

I honestly think if it came to it he would actually cut the power. Let's see if he can convince the other premiers to do the same

[TheGlyphstone]

Does anyone have a reliable source for best, median, and worst-case scenarios of a Canadian energy embargo? Right now it's just the various border states insisting their energy grids are fine and won't suffer any disruption. That seems overly optimistic to say it'd do nothing, and Ford seems unlikely to do it if he and his advisors didn't expect some impact.

[Ollumhammersong]

Does anyone have a reliable source for best, median, and worst-case scenarios of a Canadian energy embargo? Right now it's just the various border states insisting their energy grids are fine and won't suffer any disruption. That seems overly optimistic to say it'd do nothing, and Ford seems unlikely to do it if he and his advisors didn't expect some impact.

Well the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. Canadian media has obviously been trying to buoy our own morale by over inflating the effects of things like energy embargoes and the near total halt of American liquor sales across the province. While a lot of American news sources I find are suggesting that none of it really matters, the loss of business is less than a 1% blip on their spread sheets and there's plenty of power to go around. 

Neither of these extremes is likely the truth.

Ontario alone buys 1billion dollars of us liquor a year. About 9 billion across the whole country. I don't know any industry aside from Disney or coca-cola that can just take a 9 billion dollar loss and not feel it. Maybe jack Daniel's will endure the sales loss but smaller distilleries that don't have inroads into other foreign markets will likely struggle.

As for energy, tough to say. Ontario provides energy to roughly 1.5m homes, Canada as a whole provides roughly 4.5m american homes with energy. I doubt the US northern energy grid can just take on that sudden burden without having to implement things like rolling blackouts. Add to the fact that the US in general has much less robust power grids than Canada and are more susceptible to major disruptions and higher risk for shortages to begin with.

The other thing to note about the US northern energy grid is that it requires alot of LNG, which is also mostly imported from Canada. So even if they import more LNG to make up the electricty shortfall, that is being tariffed as well at 10% so is more expensive for the average American, And Canada still controls the flow of supply, which some are trying to pressure the pre.ier of Alberta to be more ballsy and threaten the US with export tariffs on top of their import tariffs.

[Ollumhammersong]

The Koreans are wasting no time. They already started offering to replace the US as our primary military equipment provider.

I'd rather buy from the Koreans than the Americans right now, and they're making good stuff these days.

[Ollumhammersong]

Anyone else think it's wild that a provincial premier has basically just picked up the ball and made himself chief negotiator for the nation? 

And how wild it is that Ottawa really hasn't done anything to challenge that or retake the initiative?

At this point if a deal is successfully negotiated it's going to look like Ford pulled it off instead of the federal ministers

[Ollumhammersong]

[Oniya]

How are y'all feeling post-election?

[Ollumhammersong]

How are y'all feeling post-election?

Too early to say. Not quite the way I wanted it to fall, but i'm open to being pleasantly surprised. He's shown a spine when dealing with Trump so far. It's time to see if that was just performative for the election or the real deal. If Carney can actually strike while the iron is hot and is willing to build these pipelines and subsequent refineries while public sentiment and patriotism in Quebec is high, then that's great. Increased jobs, port traffic and lower gas and energy prices for the east coast would likely be gratefully received out that way. We're also seeing increased demand for LNG exports from Asia, with a new port being built out in BC right now, expanding the pipelines out west would be smart too.

However I feel like it's probably just going to be another 3-5 years of the same shit we've been dealing with the for the last decade already.