ryanrambling:

cykthoughts:

I met Justin Trudeau just over 5 years ago, in April 2010. Still a student at Bishop Carroll High School, I was incredibly grateful to attend the Forum for Young Canadians in our nation’s capital, a week-long meeting of like-minded high school students from across Canada, taking part in some really cool stuff.


I was a man much younger than I am right now; fifteen years old, not terribly tall, and, judging by the side to side comparison with Justin’s glorious mane, not the best head of hair either. I was skeptical of Justin at the time, but very eager to get my picture with an up-and-coming MP who very well could be Prime Minister one day! Clearly, I was a modern-day Nostradamus.


Lining up to get my photo taken with him, I was highly skeptical of Justin Trudeau. Coming from a family affected by the elder Trudeau’s destructive and highly-anti-Alberta policies, I was curious what he would say when he heard I was from suburban Calgary.


Indeed, as soon Justin shook my hand and heard my answer to “where are you from,” he launched into quite the diatribe. “Oh, I LOVE Alberta! It’s just about my favorite part of the country, and I always love when I can get out there…” He added he was going to be in Lethbridge in a few weeks, which obviously convinced me he couldn’t have been serious. Mere months later, Justin was on Quebec television blasting Albertans as poor choices for Canadian leadership (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEyjgn6zD5Q). So much for that Trudeau warmth.


Of course, I’m a huge fan of the democracy and freedom we have in Canada, and I’m even more impressed that our voter turnout nationwide has managed to inch past the two-thirds mark for the first time in a while. We elected what we elected and, in its simplest sense, it’s a beautiful and wonderful thing. I can’ fault Canadians for electing a Liberal majority. But we’ll get what we voted for.


I know you can’t lay the sins of a father at the feet of a son, but I don’t take Justin’s pro-Alberta act on the campaign trail as legitimate. Albertans, and Western Canadians to a somewhat larger and/or lesser extent, don’t get a fair shake in this country. Period. Our new Prime Minister may talk a good game about how much Alberta and its people matter in the next four years, but it’s the exact same line that was spouted by Brian Mulroney, Jean Chretien, and Paul Martin. We all know how those national relationships worked out. Mr. Harper didn’t really do as much for the West as he could have, or should have.


Beyond that, will all Canadians really see REAL change?! Looking at the supporting cast of elected Liberals besides Justin, his future cabinet will likely just be a repeat of the Chretien and Martin-era old boys clubs. Stephane Dion, Ralph Goodale, Scott Brison, Andrew Leslie… so much for Justin’s fresh pitch. Don’t think for a second Kent Hehr or Darshan Kang will be a shoe-in for cabinet, either. The same corrupt bunch who got the Liberals turfed a decade ago, are back to run the store. The NDP, ideology aside, was the only party that offered a fresh slate of policymakers. Think about it…


Nenshi in City Hall, Notley in Edmonton, and Trudeau in Ottawa… buckle up Alberta! 2019 is a long ways off…

What an absolutely fascinating stance this young man has taken. 

Firstly I would like to admonish you of any guilt for style as a fifteen year old. We were all weird looking back then.

I think we all have a concern about the safety of Alberta with a different government, but you touched on my stance on this. So many uninformed right wing individuals tout what a great friend of the west Prime Minister Harper was, but has he really done all that much for us? Not really.

We have to consider it pragmatically: Ottawa doesn’t need the West. You can govern the country (with a majority) without a single seat in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. And that’s just how it is. 

I’m not a Liberal (full disclosure I’m actually an exec of the UCalgary NDP) but I think we can give them a chance. We’ve had a lot of change as Albertans, and specifically as young Albertans we’ve had the same provincial and federal government for all our teen years and before provincially. We’ll get used to this change. 

Regardless of the ideology of the original poster this is a good example of how two-faced and political Justin Trudeau can be.

allthecanadianpolitics:

wetwareproblem:

So I was reading through Bill S-7 (the Zero Tolerance For Barbaric Cultural Practices act) and I noticed a thing.

(2) Section 150.1 of the Act is amended by adding the following after subsection (2.2):

Exception for transitional purposes

(2.3) If, immediately before the day on which this subsection comes into force, the accused referred to in subsection (2.1) is married to the complainant, it is a defence that the complainant consented to the activity that forms the subject-matter of the charge.

tl;dr: S-7 explicitly enables the marital rape of 14-16 year old kids. It ensures there won’t be any more, but the ones that already exist? Fuck ‘em. Literally.

How’s that for “barbaric cultural practices”?

Friendly reminder that the Conservatives and Liberals both voted for this bill.

wallahbroapologist:

cant help but feel this whole “justin trudeau is so sexii lol” stuff thats coming out of other countries is yet another instance of the trivialization of canadian politics ugh

thiswaycomessomethingwicked:

My friend Luke Savage’s assessment of the result of the election last night: 

A lot of people I know are happy about last night’s election result, and I understand. Stephen Harper’s autocratic and malicious rule has finally come to an end, and I agree that this is worth celebrating.

But I hope those of you happy about the words “Prime Minister Trudeau” will try to understand why some of us don’t feel like celebrating today, and why even the defeat of the Conservatives rings hollow.

The Liberal campaign embraced a lexicon of positivity, unity, and tolerance. But the Liberals voted for Stephen Harper’s “Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act” only a few short months ago. They also voted for Bill C-51, which risks the criminalization of people who protest oil pipelines and threatens artistic expression (and will not repeal it). The likely Minister of Justice in Prime Minister Trudeau’s cabinet is a former police chief who defends openly racist policing and presided over the largest set of peacetime arrests in Canada history. The co-chair of Trudeau’s campaign was a wealthy oil lobbyist who, before the election was even finished, was already trying to help his friends at TransCanada Corp get a pipeline built.
Behind the selfies and the theatrics, behind the vague but flourishing invocations of “hope” and “change”, behind the crowds of smiling patricians, behind the formless nostalgia for 60s Trudeaumania, some of us see a politics as calculating and ultimately uninterested in social justice as that which today’s Liberalism sets itself against.

In many parts of the country last night, environmentalists, trade unionists, and social justice crusaders were unseated in favour of corporate lawyers, bankers, and insurance brokers. The business of hyper-professionalized politics - temporarily disrupted by a new political dynamic - will now reassert itself with a vengeance.

The new government is going to temporarily invest billions in new (though largely unspecific) infrastructure, after which it will make billions in (also unspecific) cuts. It will not create any new social programs, and has instead promise to adopt a means-tested approach to social policy that simply helps some low-income earners navigate unjust market structures with bigger cheques than they were getting before. It will not set targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It will sign a trade deal that will decimate what remains of manufacturing in Ontario, undermine Canadians’ privacy online, make life saving drugs unaffordable by creating a cartel for pharmaceutical giants, and erode the democratic sovereignty of the country by enabling multinationals to sue our elected governments when they dislike our laws and regulations.

Throughout its entire democratic history, Canadian politics have basically oscillated between two parties which do not seriously threaten the status quo or the injustices it contains. Against this, a third current has always insisted that fundamental change is necessary to build a truly just society. It was this ethos that gave us medicare - an institution built from the ashes of war and depression on principles of universalism and social solidarity. Neither sweeping platitudes nor bureaucratic conservatism will ever deliver us social progress of this kind, eradicate poverty, or save the planet from economic structures which may eventually destroy it.

From where many of us stand, what happened last night cannot be read as anything other than a setback, and a major one, for these efforts. It’s time we stopped marginalizing social justice, or patronizingly relegating it to the fringes. Democracy isn’t a spectator sport. Elections aren’t meant to be affirmative infotainment. Achieving social progress requires more than just a perpetual return to the traditional, professionalized politics which continues to leave one in seven of us in poverty, tolerates people having to sleep on the streets, and allows thousands of children to wake up hungry and badly housed every day in one of the richest societies in the world.

We have to demand better. And plenty of us believe and hope that, one day, we really will.

This is a really good explaination of how I feel about Trudeau.