In absolute numbers, yes. As a percentage of the population, nowhere near.

He added he respects Trump’s concerns for American workers and about fentanyl.

I wish the world outside the US trumpist media bubble would stop parroting this obviously bullshit “concern” about fentanyl. Drug addiction in the US is not a result of foreign agents. It is a mental health problem with social and economic roots. If fentanyl disappears today, it will be replaced by something else tomorrow. The trumpist framing of the issue is not only a bullshit pretext to circumvent USMCA but also actively hurts addicted people and their families. It’s just shit. Stop touching the shit folks.

Yup. Like I said, I’m a dual citizen, and I’ve experienced being an immigrant in Canada and it’s nowhere near what immigrants back home experience. But of course, Europe also has strong left and left-of-centre traditions. It just so happens that right now, they’re mostly on the back foot.

A system cannot fail those it was never meant to protect.

I dont think either side fully grasp how deep and wideranging ascension would be

Precisely. Canadians are currently experiencing whiplash from the American betrayal. While there is absolutely nothing wrong with strengthening ties, full fledged EU membership is a whole other rabbit hole that requires sober thought.

Fun fact, Canadians can legislate these things on our own, without having to also adopt a whole bunch of European dysfunction.

I don’t think Canada needs the Euro or the Stability and Growth Pact straightjacket. We also don’t need European xenophobic attitudes towards immigration.

Let’s have a customs union, and let’s have closer integration and cooperation, but let’s keep our independence.

Signed, a dual citizen.

He’s been prime minister for like 10 years, like 3 elections. People in democracies get tired of leaders after a while.

As is tradition.

Aaaaand you circled back to a US political strategy that I’ve been arguing is not applicable to Canada. This is now a loop.

Loreto is saying that there is no material difference between the LPC and the CPC. The conservatives absolutely say they are different.

Ultimately though, here is what Loreto is actually saying:

The only real decision, then, isn’t whether or not to support the Liberals, but how you can use your energy and limited time to make something better, build something more powerful, that can force the Carneys of the world to make better decisions.

Bad faith, bad also kinda garbage, interpretation: “she’s saying don’t vote and that it doesn’t matter, she’s dampening the vote”.

Good faith, useful, interpretation: “vote how you will, but know that if you want real change about real problems it will take more than just voting”.

Conservative talking points? I have no idea what you’re talking about.

Yes, because they won the conservative toss up seats and the Ontario Liberals and Ontario NDP could not bring themselves to cooperate. If you are arguing for strategic ABC voting, riding by riding, I’m right there with you bud. But that’s not what you’re arguing for. You’re arguing for everyone to fall in line and vote Liberal, and not criticize Dear Leader, in some kind of pointless, nonsensical copy of the American “Blue No Matter Who” strategy. And if you think you’re going to be able to bully non-Conservative voters to fall in line behind the Liberals no matter the local context, ben, bonne chance…

You keep talking to me as if I’m campaigning for PP. You keep fighting shadows and not understanding what I’m telling you. This is Canada, we do not have the US two party system. We don’t have a binary choice. We have a multi-party democracy.

EDIT: toned down the all-caps. Sheesh man.

My understanding is that Carney is a pragmatist, rather than a Keynesian per se, so he’s not shied away from using Keynesian economics in times of crisis. I think he self-described himself like that in his first post-election speech. So, I would think that if the trade war with the US becomes a crisis, a Carney cabinet would not shy away from government stimulus. But that’s not to say that in “regular times” he would do not operate as a run-of-the-mill neoliberal.

You’re fighting shadows buddy. Not only that, you’re projecting on the Canadian system an American political strategy, which is just silly, because the game is entirely different. My riding is a tossup between the Liberals and the NDP. The Conservatives are barely fourth. Flipping it to the NDP, does nothing for the Conservatives: if you haven’t noticed, we’ve had an NDP-supported minority government for 3 and a half years. Were I in a Conservative tossup riding, I’d vote and advocate for ABC hands down. But don’t you fucking dare barf crap like “if you’re campaigning against the Liberals you are campaigning for the Conservatives” at me. This is Canada, not some fucking swing state.

Only, thankfully, in Canada we don’t have a stupid two-party system that forces people to make impossible choices. In Canada such a framing would only apply to the ridings swinging between L and C. But other than that, we’re a pluralistic democracy and I see no reason why left wing critiques of the center should be shouted down.

What a bad faith thought-stopping thing to say. Check my post history, I’m not here to shill for whatever.

It will not solve our problems.

Well, yea, I mean that’s the whole point of the article.

Now one might agree or disagree with the claim of an “even more rabid conservative party”, but recent experience kind of validates that, right? Biden was a parenthesis in between two fascist waves, and similarly Draghi (someone exceptionally similar to Carney) was a parenthesis between the 5SM and Meloni. Elsewhere in Europe, too, centrists like Macron or Starmer of Scholz have not addressed the underlying issues that bolster the far right and seem to just be only helping to move the Overton Window so that they end up being “the left”.

No tomato throwing here because I just wish it were true because it sounds simple. But I just don’t think it works. So long as work exploitation and the profit motive persist, any gains will always be precarious. I mean, it’s much harder to build something than to tear it down, as we also see with the DOGE monkey business. We have to win every time but they have to win once.

So I would argue that certain fundamental moral imperatives would have to be codified as inalienable rights, constitutionally and declaratively. So for example it should come to be considered illegal and morally repugnant to rent humans, just as it is to buy them. It should also be considered illegal hoarding and gross to pass down intergenerational ownership of capital (“passive assets”, “investments”, and the like, I’m not talking about personal property).

But the thing is once stuff like that are enacted, there is no longer anything to be called “capitalism” any more.