[Hong Wu]

The Liberals have been in office for 15 years, so it was about time to oust them, I just wonder how it happens to be a Ford again. Doug Ford looks like a twin brother of Rob, how is he expected to be different? Maybe he isn't.

Ousting them doesn't seem to always include having them lose official party certification. The second biggest party is Ontario's center-left party, I'm guessing what happened is that many of the liberal party's former supporters ditched them for that center-left party. In some ways this says even more than having the conservatives win; the liberals probably won't be making a comeback, even those on the left are probably ditching their extremists. It wasn't just conservatives taking a lead, it appears to have been a significant defection from the liberal party's ranks.

It's a huge development for peoplekind

[Beren]

I love my brothers too. Whether they have used drugs I haven’t is irrelevant. Are there any relevant things they have in common that should concern us?

They're both from the same clan, maybe that should concern us. They ran a business together, which has an aftermath too.

Rob Ford’s widow sues Doug Ford over family business days before Ontario election

However, my point only is whether why it has to be a Ford again.

[One Degree]

They're both from the same clan, maybe that should concern us. They ran a business together, which has an aftermath too.

Rob Ford’s widow sues Doug Ford over family business days before Ontario election

However, my point only is whether why it has to be a Ford again.

I have serious concerns about anyone who thinks they deserve high positions. You can’t expect such people to truly understand the needs of the many. All we can do is try to force them to compromise to get elected. Our best power is a willingness to switch parties as needed, which is why all parties try to discourage this through indoctrination and propaganda that demonizes the other. Very few actually want to be a ‘racist’ or ‘SJW’. This is why I don’t understand why more don’t support Trump. He is just swinging the pendulum back toward the center.

[blackjack21]

Let's hope he has crack cocaine problems too as his brother did!

Poor ethics...

Another populist asshole goes into power because of too many stupid fucking people.

...that happen to be Canadian? This is why the Bell Curve still matters. Leftists like to think themselves smarter than everyone else. Adlai Stevenson ostensibly retorted to a woman who said, "every right thinking American is with you" or words to that effect, to which Stevenson said, "that's not enough, madam, we need a majority."

If you (and drlee for that matter) are as intelligent as you think you are, than you have to realize that high IQ isn't that relevant in a popular election. The electorate at large is going to be the mean average, not an outlier.

Canadians are not as gullible and uneducated as Americans.

What about people from Ontario?

@blackjack21 maybe stick to reality instead of your warped sense of it.

So you think "stupid' is a contagious disease?

Insane liberals say this is because everyone is stupid except them.

I'm becoming increasingly convinced that people who continually characterize themselves as smart and everyone else as stupid are probably using cocaine. It's axiomatic that the political masses will have mean average intelligence.

It seems like North American right-wingers mean to revolt against decency too.

Political correctness needs to die. I suspect that sentiment is shared more widely than leftists realize.

It's a huge development for peoplekind

Cheeky!

Trudeau loses key provincial ally as decisive PC win in Ontario signals conflicts leading up to federal vote in 2019

[Albert]

What I don't understand is whether why Ontarian Conservatives have to elect a Ford if they've had enough of the Liberals. It seems like North American right-wingers mean to revolt against decency too.

Rob Ford for all the drama revolved around him was actually a good mayor. He had a proven track record of completing his promises or at least giving best attempt to accomplish it. Fords are one of few politicians who say what them mean and mean what they say. That is why average voters like them.

Why Rob Ford the mayor of Toronto was a lot of times smeared at was because he went after the budget of government workers. A lot of people in government hated him, for as he used say, "The gravy train is over". A lot of civil servants are going to hate Doug Ford as well, because he is going to cut their fat cushy government salaries.

Basically what I'm trying to say, there is merit to Ford, and it is not because Conservatives are going against decency that he won.

Liberals in Ontario messed up big, they have created a lot if issues, all they way from economy to education. For example one of the biggest issues here is how they messed up electricity prices. Ontario has a surplus of electric power production, yet we pay one of the highest prices for electricity.

It get better, why do we pay such high rates, all because of contracts signed by the Liberal government with the suppliers. The Liberals say they can not change them now because they are legally binding and it will be cost to much to get out of them now.

NDP have a bad record in Ontario. Plus what they are doing out in Alberta now is insane. Basically gender neutral bathrooms for kids in school, screw them, socialist degenerates.

[Hong Wu]

To avoid derailing another thread, Wikipedia says that 38% of Canadians live in Ontario. It's also one of the most densely populated regions. I highly doubt that less densely populated parts of Canada are more liberal than people in Ontario are. So the Liberal party in Canada looks finished.

[Godstud]

Well, despite looking at wikipedia, you still apparently, and unsurprisingly, know very little about Canadian politics on both the federal and provincial levels. Just because people vote for a politician on the provincial level, does not mean that they support the same party at the federal level.

Alberta, for example is well known, until recently, for voting conservatively on the provincial level, but liberal at the federal level. It's a way of providing some balance. Recently, however, due to a calamity of errors by the conservative party on the provincial level(Prentice made some big mistakes), Albert voted NDP. This was quite a change from normal Albertan politics, as NDP were notoriously left-wing. They have, however, turned out to be quite fiscally conservative, thankfully.

Now, on the national level, that doesn't mean that they'll support Trudeau in the next election, if he runs.

Making the same assumption about Ford in Ont. is going to run into the same problems. That does not mean that the liberals at the national level are going to suffer for it, although it'll likely make it harder, depending on the representative they have.

[One Degree]

To avoid derailing another thread, Wikipedia says that 38% of Canadians live in Ontario. It's also one of the most densely populated regions. I highly doubt that less densely populated parts of Canada are more liberal than people in Ontario are. So the Liberal party in Canada looks finished.

I would suspect there are some liberal enclaves in Western Canada, but yes I find it hard to believe Ontario was not their stronghold.

[Godstud]

You cannot mistake liberals in Canada for being the same as Democrats in the USA, or likewise Conservatives for being similar to Republicans. They are not even close. Both parties are very centrist, with Conservatives often being conservative in name only.

There are no "strongholds" in Canadian politics, unless you are talking about the Bloc and Quebec.

[One Degree]

You cannot mistake liberals in Canada for being the same as Democrats in the USA, or likewise Conservatives for being similar to Republicans. They are not even close. Both parties are very centrist, with Conservatives often being conservative in name only.

There are no "strongholds" in Canadian politics, unless you are talking about the Bloc and Quebec.

I would suspect conservatives to be more centrist. However, are you claiming the city versus rural division does not exist? Since Canada is still mostly settled in a ‘colonization pattern’ with a very condensed metro area, I would expect the city/rural divide to be even clearer than in the US. I don’t know, so this is a question.

[Albert]

Yes Canadian politics differ in this regard, American politics are divided between two parties, who have become more ideologically polarized as time has went on. Perhaps the same will come to Canada soon enough as Canadians will wake up to the progressive nonsense.

But provincial election results do not always translate into federal ones because voters seem to vote more on issues that parties represent rather than on ideological lines.

I would suspect conservatives to be more centrist. However, are you claiming the city versus rural division does not exist? Since Canada is still mostly settled in a ‘colonization pattern’ with a very condensed metro area, I would expect the city/rural divide to be even clearer than in the US. I don’t know, so this is a question.

In this election there has been a rural vs urban divide. Large metropolitan centres like Toronto and Ottawa voting Liberal or NDP, whilst rural areas voting Conservative.

What also has been decisive in this election is that the 905 region as its called, it is basically (suburbs of Toronto) flipped from Liberal to Conservative.

[Godstud]

There seems to be things that Liberals and Conservatives agree on.

Doug Ford says he stands ‘shoulder to shoulder’ with Justin Trudeau following Trump tirade
https://globalnews.ca/news/4265484/trum ... r-trudeau/

[SpecialOlympian]

Yes Canadian politics differ in this regard, American politics are divided between two parties, who have become more ideologically polarized as time has went on. Perhaps the same will come to Canada soon enough as Canadians will wake up to the progressive nonsense.

I don't even understand how this is supposed to be a dig at progressives. You realize that polarization can only happen if a large and very significant portion or majority of the population supports progressive policies, right?

This is you:

[Hong Wu]

For all the efforts to downplay this, there are polls for Canada too and they all seem to suggest that Trudeau is done, so it does extend past Ontario to at least some degree.

[SpecialOlympian]

Thanks, guy who posted this before he read the Wikipedia article for Canadian politics. Your contribution is extremely valuable.

[Hong Wu]

This is sort of relevant: Trudeau is at the G7, netizens accuse him of lying, his apparently fake eyebrow partly falls off during his speech:

He looks stressed out which makes sense. Canada doesn't have a lot of cards in terms of maintaining its trade surplus with the US and since Trudeau is PM during this time, he and his collapsing party are going to take the blame for that.

[Godstud]

Americans like you @Hong Wu need to get a little more education before assuming trade deficits are a bad thing, just because Trump says they are.

A little education can go a long ways, perhaps....

Let's get this straight: Trade deficits aren't bad
This Trumpian fixation is at the heart of the administration’s demands at the NAFTA renegotiations

This Trumpian fixation goes beyond Asia, or China specifically. It’s at the heart of the administration’s demands at the NAFTA renegotiations, where (among other measures) it has proposed increasing the portion of U.S.-made parts used in auto manufacturing, which might increase American exports while at the same time disrupting complex trilateral supply chains among Canada, the U.S. and Mexico that have evolved over 25 years. Given that Trump has repeatedly threatened to walk out of NAFTA if he doesn’t get what he wants, his administration’s thinking on trade deficits clearly matters to Canadians.


On the surface, the badness of trade deficits sounds convincing. If we import more from Country X than they buy from us, it’s not a big leap to say that we’re paying for Country X to take jobs and economic activity away from us. And then you don’t have to go very far to conclude this must be Country X’s fault for conducting unfair trade, or our fault for putting up with it.

Trouble is, none of that is really true. Let’s take the U.S.-China example. Last year, the U.S. exported US$116 billion worth of stuff to China and imported US$463 billion, resulting in a deficit of almost US$350 billion. Factoring in services lowers the overall trade deficit by about US$40 billion. Yet China’s unfair trade practices — and there are some — aren’t the main reason for that. The main reason is that China makes more stuff Americans want to buy than vice versa.


For instance: Canada’s supply management system in dairy. Sure, we’re protecting established farm operations, but consumers pay more. We’re not even protecting jobs in the sector, where employment is steadily falling. And we still have a trade deficit in dairy: because our protected industry can’t keep up with domestic demand, Canada imported $734 million more in dairy products than it exported last year.

If they were really worried about it, governments could fight a trade deficit pretty simply — by stopping themselves from borrowing money. (Instead, the Trump administration’s tax cut proposal will instead inflate the government deficit by more than a trillion dollars, which will also inflate the trade deficit.) Yet another effective deficit-fighting strategy would be to orchestrate a recession. The U.S. trade deficit shrank nicely in 2009. Of course, there were other costs.

Oh, well. Never mind that all this tough talk about trade deficits just isn’t supported by reason or by empirical evidence, or that the solutions address a problem that doesn’t exist. It’s a bad idea that has gained currency through repetition and stubbornness.
http://business.financialpost.com/inves ... -arent-bad

[Hong Wu]

I guess I'm just not smart enough to see how what you wrote actually explains why trade deficits aren't bad. It discusses some of the more subtle reasons why they exist, which might raise alternate methods for reducing them but the premise that they aren't bad doesn't seem to be addressed directly. It also associates the recession with a shrinking of the trade deficit, which is not well explained and seems highly correlative. Anyway I'm not seeing where or how the idea of trade deficits not being bad gets supported in what you quoted.

[Godstud]

Maybe this will help.

This is good, as well:

USA consumes and imports more than it exports. It does this because it is a rich, consumer based economy. The trade deficit exists because USA consumes more, and unfair trade practices have little impact on this.

[Hong Wu]

I think to a certain degree it's a question of who is making the money. If you're a rich American, a trade deficit is partly a sign that you're buying a lot of foreign stuff. If you're an American worker, other countries tariffing American goods or undercutting American-made goods is bad for you because it shrinks your market. Isn't it in the interests of working Americans to change that situation?