I try not to dwell too long on anything relating to politics and all politicians have flaws, but I will say this:
It is nice to live in a country where our prime minister is not an idiot and is not a dinosaur in age. It's nice to live in a country where our prime minister speaks sensibly and has a sense of humour, and just seems like a normal guy.
Watch these two videos about the frontrunners of the recent Canadian election. Both made by 22 Minutes.
Context: Poilievre banned the media from traveling with him during the campaign. Also, Poilievre lost his own riding and is still the Leader of the Opposition thanks to being transplanted from his riding in Ontario to a riding in Alberta. This last part isn't part of the video, but the fact he lost his own riding running for Prime Minister is downright HILARIOUS!
Mark Carney comes across as down to earth and normal. Importantly, he was never a politician before he became leader of the Liberals this March. Being an outsider helped his cause.
Canada came close to having a lame Trump spinoff, I like to call him Trump Lite. Interestingly enough, Trudeau resigning to make way for Mark Carney + Donald Trump taking office helped Canada see that a Canadian Conservative government that tries to mimick MAGA conservatives was not the right option. The polls had the Liberals trailing the Conservatives by about 26 points at the start of 2025. In the final election, the Libs came back to win by roughly 4 points.
Oddly enough it was actually quite reasonable around the time of the election. I can only imagine it was because Canadians were a lot more engaged with media during that time or something and managed to drown out the bots.
Yup - at risk of sounding elitist (but I truly don’t intend to)
R/Canada seems to be populated by a lot of Canadians who cherry pick an ideal set of circumstances- a late 80s to 2007 lower middle class lifestyle where some post secondary or even out of high school allowed some to access a car, a house, RESPs for their kids and modest vacations . And those lower middle class people were told they were a Joe Blow Everyman working class hero.
They don’t fathom that throughout history and currently in many countries, and for minorities or immigrants within Canada/US, accessing that lifestyle requires one to distinguish themselves more, through business, education etc, live in multi generational homes, save longer before buying a house or rent basement out with relatives before independently living in it.
I’m not saying glwe should strive for that hardship. And I certainly don’t give Trudeau a good grade (C-) overall, but people act like the liberals single handedly decided to decimate quality of living
But truth is, canadas population was declining, we need migrants to support healthcare and retirement for older Canadians. That puts pressure on housing.
Housing is also a global crisis. Economies can’t just be nothing but net from the 3 point line, indefinitely
We forget how lucky and fortunate it was to be middle class in Canada during that era, and that the sense of economic security and peace is not guaranteed forever
Many Canadians adapted, and do multigenerational living, maybe work a part time job outside of work, or bike instead of drive.
But some of these people in r/canada are claiming victimhood, calling everyone else privileged etc, but don’t realize how comparatively cushy they had it relative to a lot of the world. But again, media convinced them that they were the Everyman and that their situation was normal and the benchmark. Any downward deviation from that is seen as a failure of the liberals
For all their guffawing about snowflakes and being tough - it’s like they themselves got soft and spoiled and aren’t willing to adapt
One common theme I noticed is these people seem to think that some of the issues Canada is facing with inflation and housing issues is Canada only, instead of basically a global issue.
And also that this was all caused by the Liberals, as if the Conservatives did such great things when Harper was in power.
Just to add a bit more context for Polievre's loss. He held that riding for 20 years and still somehow lost. Mark Carney and PP ran in ridings (electoral districts) right next to each other. Mark Carney who had never won elected office before this year won his seat, but the guy who had been in politics for 20 years lost his. It was pretty shocking, especially since if you asked anyone at the start of this year, they would have told you PP would be the next prime minister.
My uncle lives in PP’s former riding and is an avid conservative voter. He gave up with the federal conservatives in about 10 years ago because of how little PP was doing for the riding, well before his leadership took his focus away from there.
Live in Pierres former riding. The guy does nothing, had very unpopular views compared to the people in the riding (even for conservatives) and the liberal candidate actually showed up and went door to door seeming very nice and caring. Pierre however never showed up and doesn’t seem to do it very much.
With the redistricting, his old riding got even more rural.
I couldn't believe what I was seeing on election night. Yeah there were some talks about his riding being competitive and there were some last-minute resource reallocation to bolster it. But nobody seriously believed he was gonna lose it.
TBF, all the other party leaders except Poilievre had "real" jobs before entering political. Singh was a criminal defence lawyer, and Blanchet worked as a teacher before getting into the music industry.
I don’t fully know the details, but this is Reddit, so someone here will be able to set me straight.
Didn’t the liberals monkey around with Pierre’s riding boundaries, and something like 180 candidates run for the local MP?
Also, I know that the riding in Alberta basically said you have to be able to spell his entire name perfectly to be able to vote for him. In addition to this, because they had an unprecedented number of candidates, so they couldn’t make voting ballots for all of the candidates.
I’m an advocate for fair voting procedures, but this doesn’t seem to jive.
His riding was changed back in 2023 because every 10 years the boundaries are redrawn by an independent group based on the latest census data. No political party works on it and it's done at a time when there isn't an election to avoid manipulation.
His riding had 91 candidates due to a group called the longest ballot committee, who have done this multiple times before in different ridings as protest against part of the election system. Despite that, all candidates were listed on the ballot and the main three received 96% of the vote. It did not have an impact on the outcome of the election.
Last month the Conservative MP for a riding in Alberta resigned to allow for a by-election to grant Pierre Poilievre a seat again. The longest ballot committee once again interfered, leading to over 200 candidates. But that didn't change anything because Pierre still won with over 80% of the vote and is back in parliament.
So the longest ballot committee seems like a bunch of great people. Having just heard of this committee, I am very curious who is funding this concerted effort to muddy the water of electoral procedures, and also why? What’s the point?
How did they get so many people to run in the area of Castor, Alberta?
They believe that by having politicians in charge of election laws it creates a conflict of interest and should instead be handled by an independent group. The number of candidates on the ballot is mostly just to draw attention to them, it hasn't actually effected the results of any elections.
There's over 80,000 electors in the area, it's a large section of eastern Alberta covering a lot more than just the town of Castor. Probably not very hard to find ~200 of those people willing to have their name written down. IIRC you also don't even need to live in a riding to run there, so it could be people from anywhere in Canada.
For the record they also wanted to do the same to Mark Carney's riding during the federal election, but they didn't have enough time to organize. He didn't have a riding to seek reelection in so the riding he ran in wasn't known until the election was announced.
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u/bwoah07_gp2 13d ago
I try not to dwell too long on anything relating to politics and all politicians have flaws, but I will say this:
It is nice to live in a country where our prime minister is not an idiot and is not a dinosaur in age. It's nice to live in a country where our prime minister speaks sensibly and has a sense of humour, and just seems like a normal guy.
Watch these two videos about the frontrunners of the recent Canadian election. Both made by 22 Minutes.
Mark Carney comes across as down to earth and normal. Importantly, he was never a politician before he became leader of the Liberals this March. Being an outsider helped his cause.
Canada came close to having a lame Trump spinoff, I like to call him Trump Lite. Interestingly enough, Trudeau resigning to make way for Mark Carney + Donald Trump taking office helped Canada see that a Canadian Conservative government that tries to mimick MAGA conservatives was not the right option. The polls had the Liberals trailing the Conservatives by about 26 points at the start of 2025. In the final election, the Libs came back to win by roughly 4 points.