I am Groot

This is quite untrue. At least from the Trudeau time on, which covers the last 50 years or so. Pierre Trudeau started the process of disentangling Canadians from their historical roots in the UK in order to make Quebecers feel more comfortable as Canadians. He and his party, both during his time and since then, have worked steadily away at removing all traces of that heritage they could without it becoming too obvious. The "royal" moniker was removed from everything they could except the RCMP. Ministries became Departments. The constitution, anthem and flag were all changed. Even the name of our national holiday was changed. Canadians were no longer taught much of anything about British history. Visits from the royals were, it not actually discouraged, certainly not encouraged. Immigration was opened to third world countries in hopes that building up a large population of non-Anglos and non-Francos would soften the linguistic and cultural divide between us. Ironically, you could make a case that all of this constitutes cultural genocide in Justin's language. But I heartily doubt any liberal has the slightest regret. In fact, Trudeau brags about it, saying Canada has no core identity. Well, yes, because you destroyed it. Btw, that's only applied to English Canada. Quebec, on the other hand, he asserts, is most definitely a nation with a unique and forever to be treasured and protected at any cost culture.

Having the authority and having the courage to use it and brave the political fallout are entirely different things. But you'll note the objections of BC's government have been largely ignored.

In Portland, the woke school system is teaching kindergarten kids that the idea gender is binary was brought to American by white colonizers. "When the United States was colonized by white settlers, their views around gender were forced upon people already living here."

And yet the voters agreed with the GG and voted in the opposition.

How about we don't appoint people to important positions based on race?

Well, according to Trudeau we aren't a nation and have no central vision or identity. How are we to bring about a new type of country out of that?

Harper was never a guy to push things. His politics was all about pragmatism. He bowed to Quebec again and again. Not that it ever got him anything back.

Pretty ballsy of you to presume our gender preferences. There might be Green party supporters around.

I was thinking this just this morning reading yet another scary-scary columnist talking about how Poilievre is going to destroy all life as we know it. It's very much like these people are representatives of the established order aghast at someone stepping outside their sacred order and doing things in a slightly different way. It's like they haven't had almost two decades to watch Poilievre and they're all suddenly terrified of what this "outsider" is going to do to their comfortably settled world. All because he's acting just slightly different. Populism is a misunderstood term. Trudeau is, by most measures, also a populist. Lots of politicians are now. It takes a brave man to come up with his own ideas and try to get elected on those, even when a lot of people disagree. The comfortable thing to do is take polls to find out what people want and then parrot that. Don't try to convince the marching band to change, just run out in front of them and pretend you're a leader. How open are we these days? George Orwell said "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." How many people still believe you should have the right to speak your mind and say things they don't like?

If a giant asteroid lands on parliament hill we'll reconsider.

Quebec has no choice in the matter. The federal government has full authority over getting goods to port. Quebec's oil supply has recently been threatened by Michigan. I think that provides an opening for the feds to persuade Quebec not to go too apeshit on them over this.

Buddy, if Poilievre can organize the Greens we should just name him prime minister for life because he's the most brilliant politician of our era.

I think the 'hard boiled' partisans just figure everything that disagrees with them is dishonest. And yes, a lot of people have a bullshit filter, but that doesn't always work with stories where one side of the story is left out. And it doesn't work for everyone anyway. A lot of people lead very busy lives and only give the news cursory attention. I don't think that's true. I'm all for making government as open as possible. You shouldn't even need an access to information request to get information. The bulk of what people would want should be on the web and clearly and easily catalogued to find what they want. That includes all lobbying by whomever. The only stuff I would keep secret are defense and intelligence information, and cabinet documents. And in the latter cause only for five years.

The root cause of people turning to fake news is that every media outlet is not just determined to report the news but to persuade us to their narrative, whatever that narrative might be. The mainstream media won't deliberately tell an untruth, but they don't have any issue with lying by omission. They will tell you the parts of the story that will make you lean towards their narrative, if possible, and try to avoid the parts which could persuade you to lean the other way. They will also quote selected people - the ones that further their narrative, and not the others. It will cover things out of proportion to their news value to continually poke at you to agree with their views. And it will do stories specifically based on getting your agreement with their views. Through all of this the mainstream media has engendered a lot of doubts about the accuracy and truthfulness of the news they present,

I think Poilievre is a good deal smarter than Palin. And from what I've read he's a voracious reader and has an excellent memory.

The bible is very definitely NOT clear. And it never mentions abortions, per se.

Wanting to be energy self sufficient is not a cray idea. Not wanting to be reliant on uncertain dictatorships who can use that oil against you the moment they get irritated is also not a good idea. Just ask any clients of either Russia or China. What to do? How about building a pipeline to eastern Canada? It's unlikely Irving would need much convincing since Canadian oil, being landlocked, is cheaper than the world priced version.

When you have something that works pretty well making a big change is more likely to break it than to significantly improve it.

Trudeau gets away with it (sort of) because by now the majority of Canadians are convinced he's well-meaning, albeit shallow and not that bright. Poilievre can't afford such a reputation. He needs to be seen as bright and knowledgeable. He'll have to start answering questions before long.

Well, he could simply do what Trudeau does. Take lots of questions and answer none of them.

There are a couple of ways to look at this. As an advocate of politicians being required to answer just about any question posed them by the media as long as it's not about their personal life or national security I don't like him not answering questions. I find Canadian media to be almost uniquely docile in their interviews and questions, allowing politicians to dance very obviously around the question without asking - and yet very rarely ever trying a second time or confronting them for not answering. I've only ever rarely seen such complaints and always against conservative politicians. So in that sense the conservatives have a point. Trudeau rarely answers a question. He just pretends to, but dances around the question or says something completely different, an obviously rehearsed statement that fails to answer the question. And the Canadian media have accepted that for seven years with no more than a little muttering. That's led to his ministers doing pretty much the same. As to Poilievre, I hope he opens up more. It might be he doesn't want to answer questions on policy where he disagrees with the existing party policy. That might put some noses out of joint before he has a chance to talk with people and arrange for policies to be altered. Trudeau, of course, announces party policy changes without consulting anyone (or even telling them), but that's not something other leaders should imitate.

It's not supposed to come from reporters. Or have you ever seen Trudeau even pressed heavily on the non-answers he always gives them?

Or at least start...

Well if you'd been willing to at least pay for school lunches maybe it would have survived!

The only excuse for a substantial change in how politicians get elected should be better government. Going by the examples in Europe, or elsewhere, like Israel, I've seen nothing to suggest that is a likely outcome. I agree it would be technically good to be able to represent all corners of society. But in a parliament without any clear majority this also gives fringe parties far and away more power to impact the entire country than their small number of electors justify.