I am Groot

The system requires retooling. It centralizes too much power in the hands of unelected officials, is unresponsive to will of the people, and is populated by venal, self-serving individuals who can get away with what they do because of a shroud of secrecy over all their actions. The first thing that needs to be done is to open up the government's books and records. Almost nothing the government does needs to be hidden from the eyes of the electorate. The Trudeau government won't tell anyone anything if they can get away with it. Trudeau himself won't even pretend to answer questions. He just says something sometimes only peripherally related to the question and smirks. A lot more independence for MPs would help. How about this. We remove political parties entirely. Let every MP vote for what they want to. They can elect a cabinet among themselves and then the cabinet can elect a PM - confirmed by the House.

What is unrealistic about it? I'd say we pretty much had two out of three with Harper. We have 0 for 3 at the moment, of course.

Honest, capable and open government that represents both the will and the interests of the electorate?

Far be it for me to criticize a simplistic answer, especially when I know you meant it to be a throwaway thing, but this really doesn't indicate anything. GDP per person is a vastly better measure of wealth. And even then only when you account for the fact the vast majority of wealth is going to a tiny group of people. It's quite easily possible for overall GDP to be going up while individual wealth and disposable incomes go down. Our incomes are higher than they were forty years ago, but how long we have to work to pay for basics like a house or a car or an education have shot way past our increased salaries.

You can believe that the climate is warming. You can believe that some part of that is man-made. But what you can't intelligently believe is that anything that sophomoric twat Trudeau and the Buttheads he's surrounded himself with will do anything useful to combat it. All he's likely to accomplish is making Canada a much poorer nation.

You're not reading what I'm writing. Is it a conspiracy to say the solution proposed (by politicians) will not work because most of the world isn't doing it? Is math too hard for you or do you just cling to any proposed solution and desperately push back against anyone who doubts it?

You apparently do. It's their programs and policies you are defending against all attacks. Despite the clear reality that none of them will accomplish a damned thing but to make Canada poorer. That's not a conspiracy, it's reality. Something you apparently find offensive.

Because I'm not. These so-called climate experts of yours make predictions. They don't design government programs which are alleged to be doing something about those predictions. The 'experts' you are challenging me for not agreeing with are named Gerald Butts and Justin Trudeau, among others.

If you think appointing people to those vital institutions on the basis of their skin colour, religion and gender rather than merit doesn't undermine public trust in them you're kidding yourself. If you think hiring and promotion based on identity group membership doesn't anger people not belonging to favoured identity groups you're really kidding yourself. And if you think there isn't going to be a massive, probably violent backlash to this once Trudeau is done inciting people into hating each other you really don't understand human behaviour. Young folk who find themselves not hired, not promoted, not getting that government grant, and being constantly blamed for things they never did and things they never thought are very likely to turn bitter and angry, especially in the face of economic downturns where they find themselves shut out of things like owning a home. "Sorry, kid. I realize you have that masters degree and all, but we're going to hire this immigrant from Somalia because we're helping make it up for the racism your ancestors practiced on his ancestors - even though his ancestors were never here to begin with."

No, I claim that the math says the solutions are not working and cannot work unless every country sets about reducing their CO2 emissions. China's emissions exceed all developed nations combined, and they're still building coal plants. Nothing the West does, even at a cost of tens or hundreds of billions - is going to counter China's increases alone. Except China isn't alone. India is running on a similar path. Their increases outweigh the west's decreases too. Then we have all the rest of the developing world, all gleefully building coal plants and increasing emissions. Well, you can't blame them. They need more power for all those factories moving out of the West to where the energy costs are cheaper. So don't even try that 'you're not a climatologist' bullshit, pal.

And here we have another. A woman out on bail for two counts of aggravated assault assault with a weapon, arson, failing to comply with probation and failure to comply with a release order - which suggests she was already violating a previous release order when arrested last time (and bailed), and disregard for human life - has been arrested for a new charge of... guess what? Yes, aggravated assault with a weapon! Also failing to comply with a release order. And, I kid you not, she was then released on bail. Again. https://globalnews.ca/news/9415820/woman-on-bail-charged-stabbing-released-again/

The problem is a PM who becomes too deaf to his cabinet and caucus loses votes and then gets overthrown in the UK. In Canada caucus is composed of obedient sheep who will follow a disastrous leader over a cliff.

Disagree. Trudeau gleefully jumped aboard the culture wars bandwagon and has been doing his level best to use them to his political advantage, often imposing policies he has to have been told are useless just to appeal to the progressive activist set and to infuriate the right. His government has put equity, diversity and inclusion at the top of every list of tasks handed to cabinet and gone out of its way to virtue signal and divide Canadians by placing merit on the back burner behind membership in favoured identity groups. He is not only dividing Canadians by race, gender and ethnicity but by geographical region. He is, imo, the most divisive PM in history, and is doing it deliberately, for no reason but crass politics. I'm not really even certain he gives a damn about the diversity, equity and anti-racism crap so much as has seized on it to grab votes from the NDP and attack the Tories. But it's dangerous and destructive to society, and he doesn't care.

Great. How? Let's hear the details. Without some details it's just mouth noises. And no one is going to take him seriously on it.

No. I just know math. I don't need to be an expert in science or climatology to understand fairly basic math.

I have little or no problem with all that. But that's not what we're doing. We're simply imposing ever increasing costs on energy use. Which is damaging our economy and driving manufacturing to other countries which are building coal plants to make their energy cheaper.

Nothing Canada does will have ANY impact on climate change. None. Zip. And I'm not about to beggar our economy while all the big emitters keep building coal plants. Screw them. Let them fry. They're the ones who are going to suffer in the future anyway. I'll go for building nuclear plants, for putting in place flood controls and irrigation systems and better building codes. That's it. Not one dime to climate change or cutting emissions (which is done by increasing the cost of energy and thus damaging our economy) until everyone is on board with cutting their own emissions. And spare me the nonsense about us serving as such a noble example the Chinas and Indias of the world will start closing down their coal plants. There are lots better examples than us in Europe and have been for a long time. And they're not inspiring anyone but Greta.

Uhm, no. It tried to get a type of electoral reform which would benefit themselves. And that was absolutely not the type Canadians wanted. It couldn't persuade the other parties OR Canadians to go for it.

Perhaps I should have said this is an area they will never be able to compete with the Liberals over. The last three elections they offered very little other than small tax incentives to targeted groups. The bulk of Conservative supporters want, above all things, a competently run government which devotes most of its time to the economy, with some left over for national security and things like that. They want a balanced budget, an axe taken to the ever burgeoning regulatory framework Trudeau has been so frantically growing, and a focus on economic growth rather than monetary redistribution. That means freeing up natural resources projects from the decade long legal journey through red-tape and narrowing the focus of government to what government needs to do as opposed to sticking their ore into everyone's business. And by 'national security' I don't just mean beefing up our counter-intelligence services and the military but setting in place policies which get criminals, particularly repeat offenders, most particularly violent repeat offenders off the streets for long periods of time and shutting down illegal immigration by people whose names we don't even know since they destroy their documents before showing up and claiming asylum. Any comparison with Trudeau on not meaning what you say is going to allow almost anyone but Trump to emerge victorious. What Poilievre needs is a set of fully fleshed out policy proposals. And due to the suspicion he's one of those heartless people who care about money he probably needs, politically, a large, solid proposal on the social welfare front, too. I would prefer it to be something working with and through the provinces, however, as they are the proper level of government to oversee such things. Health care would be a good example of somewhere he could make a proposal which would draw a lot of favourable attention from the public, even those who are suspicious of conservatives. But only as long as the proposal is articulated in such a way as to preclude any resemblance to an "American style" healthcare system. For which I would suggest picking one of the better performing Western European systems and then stating outright that the tories would move our healthcare system towards the same basic operational outlines as that one. Few European systems actually wind up spending more government money on healthcare anyway, though they almost all get far better outcomes, especially in terms of much higher numbers of doctors and hospital beds per capita and much lower wait times.

Uhm. No to all of that. The restrictions and mandates ended due to improvements in hospital visits brought about by vaccines. The Truckers overstayed their welcome and pissed off the great majority of the country - including me. Their demands ranged from unreasonable to lunatic. No, I fear he's a political whore like Trudeau who will offer up whatever policies to whatever groups he thinks will or might vote for him. His immigration policy is a prime example of that. Offering to remove English language requirements to immigrate is about as low as it gets when it comes to pandering.

The Liberals' success rests on buying votes. That's never going to be a strategy the Conservative base accepts. Unfortunately, it does work. It's much easier to get "Here's some free money!" into a ten second sound bite than to explain how fiscal policy, low taxes and regulations combine to create a good economic environment which leads to productivity increases and thus improvements in the standard of living. That being said, even I don't like Poilievre. I don't like his catering to the trucker/anti-vaxxer crowd, his anti WEF nonsense, or his nonsensical statements about digital currency. I don't like his immigration policy (such as it is) and don't like his lack of specifics on how he would deal with various issues. I still think a conservative government would be run far more competently and far more in the interests of the country than this shallow, self serving Liberal administration, but agree he's likely to lose if he doesn't produce some attractive policy proposals that have enough flesh attached to the bare bones to sound like he means it.

I've always believed he was just the fall guy and that the direction came from Trudeau and the PMO We've seen none of that from this government. But then again, why should a minister be held responsible for decisions the minister has little say in? Morneau is not the first to say that all decisions in this government come from the PMO and that ministers are simply given their talking points. And therein lies the problem with this performative government. Ministers are chosen for their visual appeal to certain communities. They're chosen as window dressing, not for their abilities. Every previous government had powerful, stand-out ministers everyone knew and who were respected for their abilities, as well as political savvy. Not this one. Or at all. As an example, Harper made the difficult decision in support of economics advise to push back the retirement age by two years because this was what would deal best with an aging population. There were no votes to be had in this decision. Rather the contrary. Trudeau campaigned on repealing it, and did. Harper put in place legislation to require native bands to make their spending public. Trudeau repealed that too. Harper capped the import of elderly immigrants because they were costing a fortune in health care resources and a quarter were winding up on welfare. Trudeau has increased that number by 600%, offering further increases in every election he's run in - always in immigrant/ethnic heavy ridings. The decisions Trudeau has made which were for the benefit of the party as opposed to the country are innumerable. I cannot think of any done which were for the good of the country but detrimental to the party's electoral hopes.

Except the expert who knew better was Morneau and it doesn't sound like Trudeau ever paid much attention to him.