I am Groot

Not among the sane.

Who does? Anyway, I've heard and read enough about the state of free thought and speech at post secondary institutions over the past five years to have little respect for them as forums of open thinking. They're among that group that loves and insists on diversity of skin colour but not diversity of thinking. I regard them as government employees and feel they ought to be completely apolitical in their teaching. Not that all government employees bother to act apolitical these days, of course.

I was about to point out that Trudeau clearly doesn't and then I thought... okay, that doesn't count.

He's has lived in Ottawa now for a very long time. He's more of an Ontarian.

I imagine those three bills to regulate the internet would be reversed under him, as a start. There'd obviously be no vaccine mandates or passports, and no more encouraging of woke cancellation. I believe he's said he wants less government interference in people's lives and less regulation.

I'm afraid I give Trudeau little credit in the job department. Because the hardest job, after all, is to get the job. Getting a job through family connections, including at an exclusive private school, does not qualify. Still, he did manage to show up for work for a couple of years - as far as I know. My real problem with him back in the day was his lack of political experience. The absence of which has been amply demonstrated. The only real reason to care about a private sector job is (Imho) to see if the politico can relate to ordinary working Canadians. I don't think Trudeau can. Not because of his slim private sector experience but because he's never had to worry about money or budgeting and always had family connections to fall back on for jobs. And at least Poilievre took the seat away from someone else, rather than being handed a safe party seat in Alberta or Saskatchewan. And apparently worked hard at it. https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/over-seven-elections-pierre-poilievre-honed-a-winning-strategy-but-will-it-work-for-the-job-he-wants-the-most

There are things I don't like about Poilievre, primarily regarding his support of the truckers and his spouting nonsense about the WEF and cryptocurrency. I trust he's lost his interest in the latter after the price collapse over the past few months, though. As for his opposition to mandates we shouldn't forget Trudeau was also opposed to them prior to the last election campaign. He said they'd be too divisive. But when the Conservatives pulled ahead in early polls he quickly embraced them, divisive or not. Most of the things Poilievre talks about are pretty mainstream. And attacking big government, red tape, taxes and the deficit are bedrock conservatism. He is absolutely right when he says the biggest brake on housing development is the network of regulations imposed by municipalities on builders. It takes far too many years to get permission to build anything in this country, and there are too many restrictions on what and where. All of that adds enormously to the price of housing. His determination to cut through the process to get natural resources projects launched and to get them to markets is also standard conservatism. And as the economy sours I suspect that will get a lot more support. I see people assuming he can't win the cities, but this is a mistake. He doesn't need the cities. He needs the suburbs and exurbs. Which are filled with immigrants. Poilievre is an immigrant friendly leader married to an immigrant. Immigrants, by and large, come from very conservative patriarchal societies and have a preference for men they see as 'strong'. Scheer certainly wasn't that, nor O'Toole and his flipflops. I suspect Poilievre will poll quite well among immigrant groups. His French is also quite good, far better than any of his predecessors save Mulroney. Can he pick up seats in Quebec? The CAQ is certainly not a left wing party and Quebecers love them. There seems to be very little affection for Trudeau in Quebec. Well, or anywhere, really. Insipient Trudeaumania faded away awfully fast when his phoniness became impossible to ignore. Poilievre gave quite a respectable speech the other night but he needs a majority, or very close to one to get into office. The NDP rejected any cooperation with his predecessor despite how mainstream he was. They have become an adjunct to the Liberals and if the two parties win enough seats he will support Trudeau as PM again. That means he either needs a majority or the support of the BQ. Which he might well get.

By almost any measure Justin Trudeau is a populist.

Yes, I went back and listened again. I misquoted Galloway. But that's still a record. I was quoting this guy at the 4:15 mark, who ought to know what he's talking about. He was the army Lt General in charge of recruitment and training. First, no it does nothing of the sort. Second, how dumb are they really? Furthermore, 22 percent of millennials in the poll said they had zero friends. Twenty-seven percent said they had “no close friends,” 30 percent said they have “no best friends,” https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2019/8/1/20750047/millennials-poll-loneliness I'm sure economics is a frustrating part of unhappiness. But economics have less to do with happiness than having social connections and a mate. How happy are you if you have a million dollars but no friends? And the numbers of people feeling isolated and lonely are growing, especially among young men.

Again, you're failing to understand the purpose and value of the monarch and the royals. Especially in these times of political division, the Queen, as the head of state, served as a constant, reassuring reminder in everyone's lives. A non-political national leader everyone could unite behind. And don't discount her influence behind the scenes because every politician who has spoken of her, including Harper, Mulroney, Clark and Chretien, as well as past British PMs have spoken of her enormous store of knowledge, experience, intelligence and diplomatic ability. They could ask her advice and know that it would be good and that she could keep a confidence. The royals have long served as roving ambassadors for the UK, as well, soothing troubled waters around the world as they deal with foreign leaders in a casual way more formal government ambassadors can't. You say a lot of people could fill that role. Could they fill it to the extent you have foreign governments dropping their flags to half mast when they died? Would the president of France and chancellor of Germany have their national flags at half mast as they lament her death? I've seen no such international unanimity at the death of any international leader. Is the vet going to have a million people at their funeral? I suspect the Queen had a hell of a lot of relevance to those people, not to mention the hundreds of millions who will be watching the live coverage at home. That she has no relevance to you is beside the point. And taking silly shots at someone who IS very relevant to a lot of people for no better reason than to sneer at them is not the mark of a happy guy.\

I caught this on my youtube lineup just now and thought it was pretty accurate and worth discussing. Bill Maher discussing issues with Scott Galloway and Matt Welch, and Galloway points out that the freshman class at universities has 50% more women than men - and that women with degrees rarely marry men without. He also points out that the most violent societies in the world are those with a lot of young men who can't find mates, can't find jobs, and don't feel valued by society. Young men are twice as likely to be suspended from school. Seventy percent of high school valedictorians are women. Only one in three men under the age of thirty have had sex in the last year. He blames Tinder and social media, saying that men outnumber women two to one on dating sites and just ten percent of them get 90% of the attention from women on those sites. Men aren't learning how to socialize with women or each other when they're their phones and computers all the time. Another odd factoid I picked up recently from youtube is that 75% of the young people who volunteer to join the US army (the great majority being males) are rejected, primarily for being obese. So it sounds like young men are just not connecting with society. They're sitting in their rooms playing video games, eating garbage, not caring about school, not able to get girlfriends, and thinking they'll never get a good job so screw it all.

This is a very superficial understanding of our debt, and largely due to the dishonesty of government and the uniqueness of our pension system. Most of the rest of the western world's pension plans invest in little more than government bonds. Ours is one of the very, very few which invest in the stock market. Thus through arcane accounting games the government is able to set off the value of the money in the Canada and Quebec pension plans against our debts to artificially lower our actual debt. Also, in most western countries, the immense cost of the national healthcare program is born at the federal level, not at a sub federal level as we do here. That is what has driven our provinces into higher debt (for which the federal government is ultimately responsible anyway.). Leaving out just the assets of the CPP and QPP our debt is fifth worst among industrialized western countries, behind only the US, Italy, Japan and Portugal, at 118% of GDP. As explained here and here.

You ought to have pride enough not to expose your complete lack of knowledge on subjects under discussion. All you seem to understand is that, unlike you, they have a great deal of money. But lots of people are wealthy. There are literally thousands of billionaires. What responsibilities do they have? They can do what they want, when they want, or not do anything at all. The Queen's schedule is legendary, and filled with all manner of tasks few would have much interest in doing. Prior to her health fading the woman worked long hours day in and day out in her role as Sovereign. If she wasn't opening bridges or attending the launch of warships she was presiding over parliament or visiting the sick in hospitals or going to funerals or celebratory masses. Do you have any idea how many public speeches the woman has had to give in her life? How many places she's had to visit - and not as a tourist, but on official business with a busy schedule? Is cutting the ribbon on a new subway and then giving a speech your idea of a great time? When not out and about she'd be home dealing with and answering her mail, or going through the special boxes containing documents she had to look over and approve, such as bills passed by parliament. Or she'd have lunches or meetings with bishops, charity workers, foreign ambassadors, or the prime minister, as examples. She has to be extremely careful of what she says, of course, always on her guard to stay apolitical. Is it? She lived a healthy life to the age of 96. Her husband died at 99. her mother lived to 103. Poor blood there, I suppose? Awfully bitter towards a strange woman you know little about for someone happy in their life.

This is a government run by people for whom budgets and budgeting are grubby exercises beneath their notice, and certainly not to be taken as a challenge to their grand ambitions of 'doing good'. Who could possibly care about the mere monetary cost of "doing good"? Besides, borrowing is cheap, or used to be, so what does it matter? It's not like Canadian voters care how much they borrow anyway.

Obviously, then, your oaths are without value. So as an American you can take your place alongside the rest of the Trump herd in voting for a man who also places no value on his oaths.

How much do you imagine we pay for the monarchy? In the UK it's long established that the monarchy pays for itself multiple times over through increased tourism. In Canada all we pay for is the GG's salary. More to the point, if you were a conservative you would realize the importance of uniting a people through the history, traditions and institutions of a nation. But you're not really a Canadian conservative. You're a desperate Trumpist who sees himself as an American, worships the man, and despises the country he's in. In an interview Stephen Harper once had, when he was prime minister, on the subject of the Crown, he said that, “like most Canadians, I was largely indifferent to the Crown.” But then he went on to say that since he held high office, he had come to see its remarkable value. Even more importantly, he added in a somewhat dark aside, “I have looked closely at the alternatives and they scare me.”

She was the Queen of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. But her decades of hard work, the adept handling of multiple crisis, her unstinting sense of duty, her wit and wisdom, to say nothing of her diplomacy won her legions of admirers around the world. She made herself, in effect, the Queen of the western world. So much so that her passing has brought tributes even from the West's enemies like Putin and Xi. Every American news channel was turned to full time coverage with their anchors and reporters in black. The same with Euronews, France24, Germany's DW, and of course, the networks in Canada. I think there's a kind of universal sense of attachment to our history we get from the royals and their pageantry and customs. Other nations wish they had such things to brighten up their secular world. Every one of the above networks, along with others like Al Jazeera covered the 96 gun salutes going off all over the UK this morning, and Charles' drive to Buckingham palace. Why? She wasn't their monarch. Why is France's president standing behind a podium in a black suit paying tribute to her? Why is Germany's president talking about how admired and revered she was in Germany? I think she was a link with our past and has been a sense of continuity for so many people in the shifting sands of political fortunes. Presidents and prime ministers came and went but the Queen was always there. The BBC announcement of her passing. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/uk-21927209

That's because it's in the nature of the Left to sneer at anything which represents Canada's traditions, history and values. It's in their nature to mock and ridicule everything about Western civilization and its accomplishments and institutions. Only by tearing down what was so painstakingly built up by better people can they hope to bring about their vaguely defined idea of the perfect society. Although, of course, they've no idea how to do that or what it would entail.

Indeed.

Well, no need to worry. I'm sure you'll be dead soon and then other people will be relieved, as well, that your caustic bitterness would no longer be inflicted on them.

Spare me your woke whine about privilege. Anyone who lives in the West in this day and age is privileged above almost all people the world has ever seen. Your real complaint is you're a nobody with no accomplishments in life and nobody cares about you. You're jealous of the outpouring of respect for a woman who took on a job with enormous responsibilities and impressed the world with her dignity, wisdom, and sense of duty for longer than almost anyone else has been alive. And your jealousy lies in the fact that when you die nobody is going to take notice or give a damn. Even if you didn't care it takes a real charmer to be yelling insults at the death of someone many others did care about.

You're a pervert and a loser. Go away.

You're a classy guy, aren't you.