SpankyMcFarland

Jason Kenney is encouraged by the number of new voters which he anticipates may have more of his supporters among them.

Better than the Liberals expected three months ago. I boldly predict they won’t be wiped out.

In Newfoundland we had less snow than usual with an early thaw. We’ve made virtually no preparations to slow down the progress of a massive fire in the centre of the island. I’ll be praying for lots of rain this summer.

The old asylum system is long gone and nobody wants to see it back. What we need is a lot more psychiatric beds. The question is, are we willing to pay for them?

I wouldn’t know enough to talk about what the policy should be but I’ve seen more active measures work with one person.

I would like to see some method of drug compliance-monitoring for potentially dangerous people, eg men under forty with paranoid schizophrenia and a history of violence. In most cases it wouldn’t have to be by the police.

Most offenders don’t have a treatable psychiatric illness. They’re more likely to suffer from poor impulse control than psychotic delusions.

My views on care for disturbed young adults are fairly paternalistic by modern standards. I would rate their safety (and the safety of others) as a major concern.

Many of the newer antipsychotic drugs are in tablet form which is fine for most patients but not for those who tend to stop taking them as they become more paranoid and violent. I know one person in another country whose life was changed for the better by going back to an injectable drug delivered by nurses at a clinic. If he didn’t turn up they came to the house.

The old asylums were horrible places and the arrival of effective antipsychotic medication in the Fifties brought a revolution in effective care, as disturbed patients suddenly required much less physical restraint. The first psychiatrist I can find that published his use of the French drug Largactil in Canada, and North America for that matter, was Heinz Lehmann in Montreal’s Verdun Protestant Hospital in 1954. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/archneurpsyc/article-abstract/651712?resultClick=1 https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2655089/#b48-ndt-3-495 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_Lehmann At the time there was understandable concern about the conditions in psychiatric hospitals and the rights of patients. Community care, combined with medication and appropriate counselling, was seen as a more humane alternative. Unfortunately, the cost of such care and who was responsible for it were less well defined than the mechanics of running large public institutions, giving governments in Canada and across the world - we were by no means alone in this - the opportunity to greatly reduce current budgets while making commitments for the future that they never fulfilled. Thus the number of psychiatric beds in Canada declined from 430 per 100,000 in 1959 to 70 per 100,000 in 2017, a grossly inadequate number. For too many, the worthy goal of deinstitutionalization became simply dehospitalization. https://madridge.org/journal-of-internal-and-emergency-medicine/mjiem-1000103.php With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to see now that the goal should have been to improve institutional care, moving carefully selected patients to community care only when that was adequately funded. Looking back, the level of optimism about a new and completely untested system was absurdly high. There is a sociological element to this story that we should be honest about. People with chronic psychotic disorders are not politically powerful. They don’t have the advocates for their care that sick children or breast cancer patients have. Unless money for them is ring-fenced, politicians will inevitably respond to what the public calls more loudly for.

That sounds Mr. Blanchet on the subject of Canada. In truth, all counties, provinces and countries are arbitrary constructs. We invent them and in time they will disappear.

Like most Canadian provinces, NL consists of islands and part of the North American mainland. Labrador is vast. It is coastal but much more than a mere coast.

I never said he had. Who can say? But I am a little surprised about the way you talk about Progressive Conservatives. Their voters vote too.

Are the stories about tensions with Houston and Ford completely made up? They both could easily have dispelled such well-referenced rumours by making a bigger effort in this election. All parties have fissures but I’m seeing consistent Tory instability along geographic and political lines.

If it happens it will be marvellous news for NL. At the moment we are somehow a have province heading rapidly for ruin, bankruptcy and territorial status. Contemplating the current Churchill Falls deal under these circumstance is dangerous for any resident of the province as apoplexy is a clear risk. When I listened to the Quebec side making the announcement I thought I noticed some desire to right a wrong. It also means that HQ get a reliable and enlarging source of clean power to sell to the Americans for the rest of this century.

I feel Balsillie could couch his message more positively, maybe with a larger dose of humour and starting with some mega mea culpas. Lord knows he can still afford the help on the style side. Maybe he doesn’t realize he needs it, a common affliction of the moneybags class? I very much think he does. We all know Canada’s productivity is a problem and many of us are ready for suggestions.

I never cease to be impressed by how resilient political leaders are. The low they experience in defeat must be extraordinary. You’re going from a life where you’re the focus and hope of all around you to being the despised and, even worse, pitied former leader subject to the unvarnished opinions of all your old comrades. It surprises me so few commit suicide. Indeed most bounce back impressively. While I’ve no predictions to make I’d say Carney has less to lose, obviously. This was a late vocation for him, un beau risque. For Poilievre it is his life’s work.

This wouldn’t be like Trump or Brexit where there was a neck and neck race and the polled lead went back and forth. The polls have consistently predicted a Liberal win. If they get this wrong I’ll lose faith in them, which is not to say there’s something nefarious going on here. I believe that, like scientists, pollsters want to be right above all things but they’ve had a problem with polling right-wing voters for at least a decade now. They seem harder to reach and more reluctant to give their candid opinion.

People may be backing the Tories but from what I can make out the actual odds quoted still favour the Liberals with both US and British bookies. They are also heavily favoured to win a majority: https://www.oddsshark.com/politics/canadian-federal-election-odds Gamblers must feel the long odds given on a Tory win are generous, ie a Tory win is more likely than the odds suggest.

Another Globe story about another rift with a PC premier. There are a lot of allegations in here, some featuring Jenni Byrne. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-poilievres-nova-scotia-campaign-stop-highlights-growing-rift-between/

If the Tories win then a lot of pollsters need to hang up their boots or fundamentally change their methodology. Although it is a fairly close election, they’ve been generally forecasting a Liberal win all through it.

Carney is a PM in an election. As a candidate he’d be better off publicizing every disgusting insult Trump levels at Canada because it’s clear that such revelations stoke his side. But he’s also the PM trying to negotiate with this maniac and as a close friend and neighbour we are exquisitely vulnerable to retaliation.

What I think should be said is this. Homelessness comes in many forms. The worst is living unhoused on the street. Clearly, America has a great deal of the worst kind. Regarding less severe forms, there is considerable variability in how the numbers can be interpreted.

Bear in mind we are in an utterly unprecedented situation where revealing every grotesque thing the US president says could provoke him further. These are not normal times.

What I illustrated for a start was that those numbers do not reflect the number of people per capita living rough on the streets. Britain’s numbers there are not in America’s league.