Moonbox

and your line of reasoning is why the Conservatives keep losing. Doing the same things over and over and not learning anything from those mistakes is the definition of...something.

Ukraine didn't invade Russia, nor did they follow Nazi justification protocol for annexing Crimea and Luhansk/Donbass (100% parallel to Sudetenland). No, she was photographed with a red and black scarf that said "Glory to Ukraine", and she probably had no idea that it was linked to resistance movements in Ukraine going back to WW2 and that far-right extremists in Ukraine like to use it. At worst this was a gaffe, but for someone who cried endlessly about media reports of far-right extremism among the Truckers Protest, this is a pathetic example of your hypocrisy and the mental gymnastics you'll do to rationalize things you like vs things you don't like. Worse, however, is that you're actually spending your time making excuses for a regime run by a criminals that regularly murders its opposition leadership, that has almost fully banned independent media and that has made criticizing the war in Ukraine a criminal offense. Now they've invaded a sovereign nation that demonstrably doesn't want them there and you're slurping Russian propaganda from telegram and the garbage-web and repeating it back to us. The wretched coping and rationalizing you have to do call Freeland a fascist while apologizing for Putin is shameful.

Did he say that actually West, or are you just bullshitting more? ?

Where did I say that? Moral equivalency is Totalitarian Propaganda 101.

Yes, but he's at least smart enough to know which way the wind is blowing. He's a populist actually promoting popular views, rather than championing unpopular ones like the freedom convoy or anti-abortion. It doesn't make him anymore principled, but it makes him more electable. Sure they could do worse, but it doesn't really matter. Unelectable is unelectable. I imagine a near-zero chance that the NDP would vote against Trudeau with Poilievre, so this will give ~4 years for the Liberals to regroup, adjust their messaging, move on from the Emergencies Act (voters have short memories), salvage their image and undermine Pierre's.

I agree but that's not the point. If a Leader won't firmly, obviously and vocally stand up for these rights, he gives Canadian voters reason to doubt. The mandates are being dropped all over Canada. My vaccine passport is vaporware now and in 3 weeks I won't have to wear a mask anymore. I'll live with that mild inconvenience for a few more weeks. Leslyn Lewis has similar problems to Poilievre, but actually probably worse. Charest could maybe win an election, but I don't think he could win the leadership race. He'd be able to pull in GTA/Montreal votes and would be popular in the East, but probably not in Alberta or the West as a former Liberal Premier. Candice Bergen is the exact same problem as Pierre and Lewis. These are not electable leaders of Canada. They don't appeal to anyone but the base, and that's why the CPC continues to lose elections. Whether you like it or not, compromise is needed. CPC party members need to get their heads out of the sand and realize that these boomer/bible-thumping social agendas are poison pills. Canadians are equally suspicious of Trump-style sloganeering. If you want to get rid of Trudeau you need a calmer, less antagonistic candidate like Harper (who can at least control the messaging) or a moderate like Michael Chong. Demagogues will fail.

Lol you don't read what I say then. Poilievre's already said he wouldn't do anything in his government to stop abortion. My issue is that I think he's an unprincipled, divisive demagogue (look that word up, it's a perfect way to describe him). I would like to see Trudeau's government defeated and think it's possible before the next election, but Pierre Poilievre won't be the guy to do it. Stephen Harper had trouble getting Canadians to trust him and he was far more measured and restrained in his social rhetoric than Poilievre's ever been.

Why are you posting newspaper articles about this when the BoC website explains exactly how and who appoints BoC governors? Naming the BoC governor is not the same thing as appointing him. I name Charles Anthony as the moderator of this forum, but that doesn't mean I appointed him. If you want to start a thread about this and discuss it more than go ahead and do it, but it's massive thread drift here as we've been warned ?

The Canadian public isn't interested in debating Human Rights issues. Abortion and gay marriage are both that. Having a different view is one thing, but playing coy on Human Rights whilst campaigning to be the leader of the Country isn't going to fly. That's the problem with Pierre Poilievre as CPC Leader. No. That's kindergarten logic. "I'm not intolerant! YOU'RE INTOLERANT." The problem with this line of reasoning is that it's you and folks like you that go out of your way to ignore/deny the scientific (and global) consensus and then turn around and tell everyone who is following them that they're wrong on the science. Bizarre. This is also why Pierre Poilievre puts a target on himself by supporting the trucker's. Whether true or not (I don't really know what his position on vaccines are) he has associated himself with an unpopular faction whose record on facts and science is abysmal. He'll be guilty by association there, and it doesn't really matter if that's a fair assessment of his views or not. This is the Court of Public Opinion and perception is everything.

Did you invest personally in Green Power, or did you sign up for free-can't-lose-money solar panels on your farm? ?

Doesn't matter. The spectre of these issues being tampered with is what scares people away from the CPC. and dudes like Poilievre are the ones who make those fears feel more palpable. To be fair, he's said that anti-abortion law "wouldn't pass" in his government, but on the flip side he's been vocally pro-life (anti-abortion) in the past AND he's indicated in recent years he'd allow Conservative MPs to introduce anti-abortion bills to vote on in the Commons. That's not going to be good enough for most Canadians, who consider these fundamental Human Rights and won't vote for a leader who doesn't stand up for them.

I'm saying that left or right is a matter of perspective and there aren't clear definitions for any of them. The terms themselves are vague heuristics meant to simplify conversations around different sets of attitudes. Nobody has an authoritative definition. I'm saying that old ideas of left or right are irrelevant. Nobody in Canada cares if the Conservatives are "left" of the Democrats in the USA, or if your grandpappy's Tories wouldn't have gone along with gay marriage. All that matters is the current context and environment.

I am looking at the whole issue. I think we can both agree that if oil companies know how to do something, it's how to make money. Canada's current refineries don't even work at capacity, nor do American ones. Why are we looking to build expensive refineries when existing capacity isn't even maxed? Even more important, refining isn't even that profitable. The most important and most value-adding parts of the oil industry are extraction and transportation. Don't take my word for it either. Here's a good article from a few years back with all sorts of ancillary references included. You'll probably find it interesting. https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/tristin-hopper-why-canada-shouldnt-refine-the-oil-it-exports The government's approval of the Bank of Canada Governor is a rubber-stamping. The Canadian government understands very well that the Bank is not a political tool and that it's in everyone's best interest to let it do the job based on facts, research and math. Perhaps if the Board wanted to troll Canada and appoint Vladimir Putin, maybe then the government would veto, but aside from that they're left to do their job. Their job, of course, is economic and monetary and stability, not getting one party or another elected. Nope. The Directors of the Bank of Canada appointed under Section 9 of the Bank of Canada Act today announced that they have appointed Stephen S. Poloz as Governor of the Bank of Canada for a seven-year term, effective 3 June 2013. Mr. Poloz will succeed Mark Carney, who is leaving the Bank of Canada on 1 June 2013. https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2013/05/stephen-poloz-appointed-governor-of-bank-of-canada/ I don't mean to be rude, but you really don't know what you're talking about here. Because the government can't overrule the Bank without publicly announcing what they're doing and why. Reshuffling Cabinet and overruling the Justice Minister was a hush-hush operation and if we had more competent opposition leaders it would have likely been a career-ender for Trudeau. The Emergencies Act probably (hopefully) WILL end Trudeau, and it doesn't look like it would have ever passed the Senate anyways. The Bank of Canada's independence is an important part of its credibility. The government's light hand on it is vital to maintaining confidence in the system. A government would have little/nothing to gain from flipping that table over.

You don't understand what relative means, do you?

Great. Bring Harper back or someone like him. Left and right is a relative scale. I think you need to look up what the word "relative" means, because you clearly seem to think there's a literal and absolute definition for Left and Right, and that both are clubs that require specific credentials. As for Ron DeSantis, LOL is all I can say about him.

I don't think you understand what I'm saying. The financing of economically feasible refining capacity and transportation (at the necessary scale) would take decades to earn a return positive return. It'd be such an enormous capital outlay at the start and require so much borrowing that we'd probably never come out positive on the investment and even if it was possible we could, it's almost certainly not worth the risk. You didn't understand the Supreme Court. The Justice Minister IS part of the government so it's silly to say it wouldn't be influenced by the government. You were confused on the role of the Supreme Court and how it was independent, just like you don't seem to understand the Bank of Canada or its governance. The government doesn't appoint the BoC governor. A council of independent directors appoints the governor for a 7 year term. Governments come and go through the governors term. You're right in a strictly literal sense, but completely wrong in a practical sense. Though the government could fire the governor of the bank or compel him to do something he didn't want to through written and publicized orders, that hasn't ever happened and is unlikely to happen. These technically literal powers are similar to those of the Queen or the Governor General. They're symbolic for practical purposes and would likely trigger a political crisis if someone tried to use them.

So you're just stating the obvious then? Okay. We'll see how well that works out for him in the medium-long term.

The Conservatives fail on these issues because they're too worried about upsetting their fundamentalist base. Emphatically shutting down debate on these issues is an easy way to get yourself out from underneath this Liberal tactic. We just haven't had a CPC leader with the courage and common sense to do it yet. There are always die-hards that will support their party no matter what. They are almost irrelevant in terms of policy platforms. Pierre has support from the base of the party but he'll prove deeply unpopular outside of that and will fail to convince the undecided voters who matter. He's wildly out of touch with most of the rest of Canada and he's the exact sort of leadership candidate Liberal spin-masters salivate over. The economics of refining our oil to a scale that would make us independent for energy sailed 20-30 years ago. Everyone sort of thinks, "Just build a refinery" but the reality is that this would require titanic sums of capital expenditure for infrastructure and refining capacity that would take us decades to recoup - just in time for green energy. I don't think you have a very good understanding of the Bank of Canada. Your views on this are very similar to your misunderstanding of the independence of the Courts from a few weeks ago. The government doesn't even have a vote on the BoC's Board or decision making process. I think you would benefit from doing a bit of research on how the Bank of Canada operates and how it's structured.

No, I want a Conservative Party that embraces fiscal responsibility and pragmatism without embracing Boomer social conservatism or Trump-style demagoguery.

You've stated facts but not why they're important, relevant or justify an invasion. Bio labs with western funding? So what? There are all sorts of Russian companies that had western funding too. Opposition leader was imprisoned in Ukraine? How's the opposition doing in Russia these days? ? You're not presenting complex questions or looking for serious debate. You're just apologizing for an invasion and obfuscating. If you were concerned for democracy you'd have been talking about the steady erosion of it in Russia since 2000 rather than justifying the invasion of a country trying to steer itself away from that.

Ukraine doesn't wish to be under the Russian sphere of influence. That's the end of that argument. Did you get all of that from Russia Today? From Telegram? Trying to make arguments about criminal elements and money laundering in Ukraine whilst ignoring Russian dictatorship and cronyism is....cringe. ? Putin never wanted to be a democratic ally. He's a former KGB autocrat with delusions of grandeur. Russian democracy died in 1999. Calling it democratic is a farce. Ukraine wasn't part of NATO already because it was assumed it would antagonize Putin, but his actions have proven NATO's raison d'etre and will strengthen the alliance enormously. Maybe, but that's probably all he'll ever get. Meanwhile he's thrust the majority of Ukraine irrevocably out of Russia's "sphere of influence" and into Europe's arms. What a genius. Meanwhile you make apologies for Putin's war-mongering. We totally believe you.

I think that's true. Both sides go way too far, but if I have to choose between a woman's right to make her own reproductive choices vs someone's right not to have transgender folk in the changeroom, I know what side I want to be on. Social conservatives will lose an all-or-nothing battle on these issues. Agreed, and that leader is Pierre Poilievre. It's guys like Pierre Poilievre that drive this sort of thinking - demagogues firing up the base of the party but completely out-of-touch with the rest of Canada.

The fact that on rare occasions a conspiracy theory might turn out to be true does not change the balance of reasoning, especially when 99.9% of them or whatever are silly nonsense. If you throw enough poo at the wall like Alex Jones, it's simple math that he'll probably get something right eventually. It's monkey-on-a-typewriter logic. If you provide enough monkeys typewriters, given enough time they'll eventually write something intelligible. I'd suggest you're wrong, because the most visible trait of a conspiracy theorist is the irrational and overwhelming suspicion of any information that conflicts with their beliefs. The government's ability or inability to reasonably explain their actions is irrelevant once someone's jumped down the rabbit hole, because no matter how many experts weigh in, no matter how much worldwide consensus you get and no matter how much bipartisan support there is for something, the conspiracy theorist will always fall back on: "MSM fake news big corp agenda". He didn't have much to gain meeting with protestors. He wasn't going to change their mind and the rest of Canada wasn't too interested in what they had to say anyways. He didn't fail to explain. Conspiracy theorists failed to listen and to instead chose to drink their Koolaid. They could have made good arguments about the relative cost of the mandates and whether it was a fair trade-off in 2022, but instead they chose pseudo-scientific garbage and hyperbole about freeeedom and fascism etc. On this we agree 100%. This is a conspiracy theory. You try to pretend it's not, but you keep pointing at the WEF like there's something dark and sinister going on that Canadians should be worried about, but can't really explain why. Nobody cares that there are global influences on Canadian politics. We're part of the world and the world economy and we're a middle power (at best). Being influenced by global players is a truism. One last thing I'll mention is your use of the term "well-documented". Conspiracy theorists love to use this term because they think it adds credibility and gravitas to their statements. It only works on people who aren't filtering information though. When they say "well-documented" it usually means either: 1) It's a vague and nebulous statement 2) It's actually not well-documented In this case "well-documented influence of foreign powers like the WEF" is just a vague and meaningless statement.

Putin Is that why the ruble is collapsing and the Russian economy is going for a nosedive after stagnating for a decade? Putin's actions in Ukraine are the last play of a desperate and corrupt regime hoping to achieve something/anything to halt the crumbling conditions of their nation.

I disagreed with the Emergencies Act. It was unnecessary, set a bad precedent and was a shameful chapter in our history. It was an equally shameful blotch on the efficacy of our law enforcement in how it the protests were handled to get to that point though. Freezing people's bank accounts isn't unconstitutional and it gets done with Court orders often enough that it's not really remarkable. What was concerning was circumventing the warrant/Court process with the Emergency Act. This was a loud but temporary blunder and hopefully puts future politicians on notice that it's not to be trifled with. I'll vote against Trudeau next election on this issue alone (provided there's anyone but Jagmeet Singh or Pierre Poilievre to vote for). Yes, you're right. You bring that on yourselves with your conspiracy theories and inflammatory rhetoric. Whatever good points you have to make get drowned out in hyperbole and people aren't interested in listening to tantrums. I'm not saying that to troll you either.