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Is Canada becoming a Communist state?


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21 hours ago, WestCanMan said:

If you really think that the net result of bringing them from the stone age to the space age just boils down to: "we gave them science", that just displays an astonishing level of ignorance on your part.

How many little girls would choose to live the actual FN lifestyle GL? If you offered families $100,000 to live one full winter in northern Canada, just like the natives did pre-1492, not even 1% of them could hack it. Life here was beyond brutal. 

The FN have it pretty good by any stretch of the imagination now GL.

Think for a second about the fact that in 2021 a single hereditary chief (FYI there are 'hereditary chiefs' in Canada that are as white as King George was, to the naked eye) from one small band has the power to kibosh a pipeline that benefits entire provinces and moves strategic resources around the country. That's almost idiotic, but it's the power that they wield.

I'm sure you're well aware that oil is an extremely critical resource, both militarily and for the economy. So, in effect, one single person has the power to put our country in jeopardy, and there's no requirement for them to show logic or reason. They just have veto power. BOOM! 

The FN also get tax breaks, free money, they can hunt and fish year round, and they get many other benefits that other Canadians don't. 

I'm not saying that life is perfect for them, but it's more than just 'fair'.

They should be thankful that it was Europeans that came here instead of middle easterners. If it was Mohammed's own armies that came here then the FN men would have had the option of beheading or conversion, and if they chose beheading then their wives and children would have been forced into rape slavery. The cultural mix here now would be like modern-day Pakistan:

We'd have to wipe out every single one of the FN people twenty times over to equal the human rights record of Pakistan (they've done 2 massive genocides since WWII, killing many millions of people), and yet the only two bad countries on earth - according to leftists - are Canada and Israel. Forgive me if I don't take leftists seriously. You're not making a great case here.

And FWIW, you still forgot to mention where the event that you spoke of occurred. I'm curious.

So none of this actually touches on the premises or the conclusion of that argument.  Even if we grant that all of your claims and conclusions are true, this:

1)Ever since 1763, it has been the law in Canada that Aboriginal title can only be extinguished by negotiating treaties between the Crown and whichever group claims the land.

2)Canada broke this law.  

3)Therefore, Canada has a legal obligation to accept justice, under its own laws.

is still true as well.  That said, you touch on a lot of ideas that come up commonly among reasonable adults while discussing indigenous issues, so I'm going to condense them into standard form and then address them, because they're important and relevant.  This requires rephrasing them - it is likely that you will disagree with how I understand some of your premises or your conclusion and I certainly welcome correction.

My understanding of your argument, in standard form, is in regular text.

Replies are in italics.

1)Indigenous people would rather have the benefits of modern society than have the existence they had before contact.

Maybe?  People have freely chosen to live in lots of strange ways for many reasons - religious ascetics would deliberately choose to inflict starvation and/or whip themselves in many different societies, including Europe.  Several groups of monks took vows of poverty or silence.  There have been warrior societies who would freely choose to die young in glorious combat rather than old and safe in a bed, such as the Vikings.  In Canada, some Law graduates turn their back on more lucrative opportunities in order to work for causes that pay them less, such as legal aid or treaty rights.  People sometimes choose irrational things.

It could also be argued that people should be free to make those choices.    Indigenous people did not choose modern society, it was chosen for them.

2)Indigenous people are better off having the benefits of modern society than they were before contact.

Better off, according to whom?  One person might look at the city of Vancouver and say, "What a beautiful city!"  Another person might look at Vancouver and say, "How beautiful this place would be if there weren't a city built on top of it!"  One person might point at the miracle of the modern hospital.  Another would point at the horror of the juxtaposition of billionaires and homeless people.  I'm not passing judgement, just pointing out that people who value different things will see the same society in different ways, and those values can't be objectively evaluated.  Therefore, one person or group can't factually say what another person or group should or shouldn't value.  (We do this all the time, but that's because it's necessary - some values don't play nice with other values).

3)Indigenous people don't have the skills necessary to live the way they did before contact.

If this is the case, it is the direct result of crimes that Canada has committed against them.  Hard to raise your kids to know how to live on the land when the government won't let you raise your kids.

4)Indigenous people wield real political power in Canada.  For instance, in 2021 a single hereditary chief from one small band vetoed a pipeline that benefits entire provinces and moves strategic resources around the country. 

There was more than one person on that blockade - the assertion that construction was halted by the actions of one single person is highly dubious.  Extralegal Police violence, delivered by militarized RCMP members, was used to clear those protesters and ensure construction of that pipeline, which is proceeding as we speak.    

5)Indigenous people enjoy many benefits to being Canadian, including tax breaks, year round hunting, and more.

True, and if we were arguing whether Colonialism was justified this would be relevant.  If we are arguing over whether Canada has broken its own laws, it is not.

6)Other peoples would have done worse things than Canadians did.

"Someone else would have broken the law worse than I did," is not an ideal legal defense.  If this were about the morality of colonialism, this premise would have merit.  If this is about whether Canada has broken its own laws or not, this point is not relevant, although I guess a judge might show some leniency in sentencing based on it?

7)Indigenous people are better off for the results of Canada's actions instead of the more severe atrocities that have been historically inflicted by other peoples.

Yikes.  Don't get me wrong, I know what you mean, and you're right, but still... yikes.  I mean, we could justify basically anything this way, right? 

8)Therefore, Colonialism is justified.

This is a completely separate conclusion than the one I was getting at.  I am pretty sure you will feel as though I just made a bunch of strawman arguments, rephrasing your points in less valid terms then attacking my less valid points as though they were yours, and I apologize for that.  I'm sure this must not be what you mean to say, but when I read what you wrote as though it were an assignment in practical logic class, that is the way I break it down.  Maybe the reason for our disconnect is that we are arguing for separate conclusions?   Or maybe I'm not seeing something obvious, that's a thing that happens sometimes.

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1 hour ago, GrittyLeftist said:

So none of this actually touches on the premises or the conclusion of that argument...

In the real world, where we live, almost all FN people in Canada people have benefitted from the events of post 1492.

The stone age was brutal. It was dangerous, cold, dark, boring and there was no real culture to speak of. They didn't even have music. If you think I'm wrong then check your spotify account.

People might fantasize that they'd want to live in a stone age society on Vancouver Island but the reality is that's bullshit.

I'm not counting grievances by the FN people against Canada as anything with merit. The balance sheet favours them now, greatly. 

I'm especially not entertaining any conversations that sound like "Canadians are the worst ever, they're committing genocide", etc. The historical perspective that I brought into this argument is important. Humans are basically really shitty, Canadians - less so. 

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4 hours ago, Zeitgeist said:

Who is claiming the land?  Such claimants have to prove continuous habitation on the land.  What’s the statute of limitations on that?  In other words, how many generations and centuries back are fair game for someone today to reference?   For example, my town was largely settled by United Empire Loyalists.  None of their descendants are clamouring for land that belonged to great great great great grandparents.  Anyway, the courts decide land claims based on evidence.

I just think it’s extreme privilege that certain racially pure groups get to live in a parallel universe where little is expected by the people who foot the bill for health, education, and much of the reserve infrastructure, namely non-Indigenous taxpayers.  I’d love a status card.  I’d feel like a Roman citizen.  It certainly discourages intermarriage with non-Indigenous.  Anyway we’re stuck with this welfare program and it’s protected by the racist Indian Act.  Either people are Canadian and subject to the same rights and freedoms and taxation or they are not, yet Indigenous are a special category of Canadian with extra privileges.  Only they can change the Indian Act and reserve system or else they can claim colonial interference.  Let’s be honest, who wants to give up getting free stuff?  There’s always the choice to leave the reserve and join the work slaves.

I admire the reserves that have found ways to use their resources to be more self-sufficient and are well managed.  For the unsustainable reserves, I wish that Indigenous would choose give their people a way out, as the current system incentivizes unsustainable settlements.  Some real injustices took place at residential schools.  It was misguided to discourage the use of native language and cultural practices.  It’s wrong to forcibly remove children from parents. Where that happened of course there’s good reason for sympathy.  We have also read the stories about the expulsion of the Acadiens by the English and the brutality of the Six Nations against the Hurons.  How far do you want to go back?  The majority of Canadians are either first, second or third generation immigrants who weren’t here when such events took place.  How much should they pay the distant descendants of early contact Indigenous?  Land claims will continue.  Healing will continue.  Everyone will need to move on because the biggest challenges ahead impact all of humanity.  The pandemic is an example of this, and the vaccines were developed in “colonial” countries.  

RE: The questions raised about legal details:  I don't know all the specifics of every treaty in the country.  Those are valid questions but I don't know the answer.  I did research that three-part argument though, I am not a lawyer but I am reasonable confident that it is correct.  Law is hard.

I agree that the Indian Act is racist, that the concept of Status is problematic at best, and that much of the money that is allocated to "help" them ends up being too often wasted or embezzled.  I confess to being frustrated at the enormous gap between the amount of money spent and the results obtained - normally Canadians are a fairly sensible people.  When has Canada ever wasted money on such a scale on anything else?  That said, if native people have so much wealth, why don't we see them among the wealthy?  A moderately ambitious, capable adult could leverage the benefits you describe into a pretty cushy life, and their kid could leverage more benefit, and so on and so on.  They've been in Canada for, what, eight generations?  That's a lot of time to force multiply.  Surely there ought to be at least one or two big-R Rich families, or some kind of "reserve as corporation" cornering the market on, I don't know, all the fish in X lake or something.  

Anyways, I do agree that we've wasted a lot of money, and I don't want to throw more good money after bad.  Problem is the solution I see is politically impossible.  I think we will need to eventually sit down and negotiate some kind of "meech lake accord for FN people."  Sweet, salty Christ, what a mess that would be!  We'd be negotiating with hundreds of elected Chiefs representing dozens of peoples, hundreds of hereditary Chiefs trying to do the same, all of them with different amounts of leverage, different grievances and demands, and a whole bunch of rivalries with each other.  Not to mention public sentiment, elected politicians and the Senate while enduring the meddling of the media and other corporations and foreign governments trying to influence the outcome with an eye to helping or hindering Canada's resource development and geopolitical situation.  No reason to think this would end better than the real Meech Lake, and it could end a lot worse.  As far as I can tell, the reason Canada continues to waste money the way it does is because it can't think of anything else to do.  It's like knowingly doing a bad thing because it's the least bad of the alternatives you believe you have.  That said, if this did someday happen here are a few ideas that might be raised:

Maybe make it so that instead of needing to know English and French to have an important government job, you should instead need to know English or French and any other officially recognized Canadian language, including non-indigenous ones such as Mandarin (otherwise we're just fighting this battle all over again in fifty years over THEIR language rights).  

Create a new language department in school.  Students may choose to learn any officially recognized language from Cree to Cantonese by zoom teaching, or French in person.

Keep federal and provincial flags below native ones on unceded land.

Create a new division of Police modelled on New Zealand where there's a regular cop and a Maori working as a pair and train them specifically for on-reserve and inner-city work focused on reducing harm and recidivism instead of punishing offenders.

Create a volunteer group of specially trained people (part bouncer, part therapist, part guidance counsellor, part drill sergeant, etc) that will live in prison, bear witness to what goes on, and do their best to advocate for the well-being of prisoners.

Allow indigenous groups autonomy over justice on unceded land or on reserves (that's a spicy one)

Mandate that the Senate must include an indigenous quota and create a bunch of new MPs of reserves so that indigenous people are electing their own federal politicians.

Give on-reserve schools the same per-student funding that the average Canadian gets (this will be the average of all provinces).

Give one hour per day off-reserve and three hours per day on-reserve of class time in public schools to an as-yet-nonexistent group of indigenous teachers to teach an as-yet-nonexistent history that fairly tells both sides of the story.  No big deal, amirite?

Set national standards for child care and elder care and increase funding for both.

Accept that Canadian law gives indigenous people on unceded land a veto over any resource development.

Anyways, you kind of get the idea.  Some of this could be talked about today, some of it would be political suicide to bring up, so even the Greens know not to raise these ideas.  There is a way forward that isn't just throwing money onto the fire, but it's going to be a difficult, stressful, expensive mess with an uncontrollable outcome and nobody really believes we'll be able to create a consensus that will make the effort worthwhile, so in the meanwhile we keep shoveling money on the fire.  Did you bring some smokies?  You should bring smokies.  This sucker's gonna be burning for a while.  Unless a Wayne Gretzky of politics suddenly shows up and skates to where the justice is going, instead of where the justice is.  I guess that could happen.  Fingers crossed!

Finally, you asked "how far back do you want to go?"  My answer is: until the damage has been healed.  I don't see a way to achieve justice in my lifetime.  Maybe if someone finds a magic wand lying around I guess.

Also I was off regarding the extent of unceded lands.  If you go to https://imgur.com/Jdby1aM you can see that it is smaller than I said - most of BC and the Yukon are unceded, a bit of the NWT is unceded, a smidge of Ontario and a third of Quebec and nearly all of the Maritimes are unceded.  Still, that's a lot of very valuable land.

Okay, it's been fun everyone but I gotta go watch the Oilers, who are not about to wet the bed, nor will their goalie drop a big squidgy turd, thank you for asking.  If there are any Jets fans here, all the best, and I sure hope I end up being the one saying "better you than me." 

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2 hours ago, GrittyLeftist said:

RE: The questions raised about legal details:  I don't know all the specifics of every treaty in the country.  Those are valid questions but I don't know the answer.  I did research that three-part argument though, I am not a lawyer but I am reasonable confident that it is correct.  Law is hard.

I agree that the Indian Act is racist, that the concept of Status is problematic at best, and that much of the money that is allocated to "help" them ends up being too often wasted or embezzled.  I confess to being frustrated at the enormous gap between the amount of money spent and the results obtained - normally Canadians are a fairly sensible people.  When has Canada ever wasted money on such a scale on anything else?  That said, if native people have so much wealth, why don't we see them among the wealthy?  A moderately ambitious, capable adult could leverage the benefits you describe into a pretty cushy life, and their kid could leverage more benefit, and so on and so on.  They've been in Canada for, what, eight generations?  That's a lot of time to force multiply.  Surely there ought to be at least one or two big-R Rich families, or some kind of "reserve as corporation" cornering the market on, I don't know, all the fish in X lake or something.  

Anyways, I do agree that we've wasted a lot of money, and I don't want to throw more good money after bad.  Problem is the solution I see is politically impossible.  I think we will need to eventually sit down and negotiate some kind of "meech lake accord for FN people."  Sweet, salty Christ, what a mess that would be!  We'd be negotiating with hundreds of elected Chiefs representing dozens of peoples, hundreds of hereditary Chiefs trying to do the same, all of them with different amounts of leverage, different grievances and demands, and a whole bunch of rivalries with each other.  Not to mention public sentiment, elected politicians and the Senate while enduring the meddling of the media and other corporations and foreign governments trying to influence the outcome with an eye to helping or hindering Canada's resource development and geopolitical situation.  No reason to think this would end better than the real Meech Lake, and it could end a lot worse.  As far as I can tell, the reason Canada continues to waste money the way it does is because it can't think of anything else to do.  It's like knowingly doing a bad thing because it's the least bad of the alternatives you believe you have.  That said, if this did someday happen here are a few ideas that might be raised:

Maybe make it so that instead of needing to know English and French to have an important government job, you should instead need to know English or French and any other officially recognized Canadian language, including non-indigenous ones such as Mandarin (otherwise we're just fighting this battle all over again in fifty years over THEIR language rights).  

Create a new language department in school.  Students may choose to learn any officially recognized language from Cree to Cantonese by zoom teaching, or French in person.

Keep federal and provincial flags below native ones on unceded land.

Create a new division of Police modelled on New Zealand where there's a regular cop and a Maori working as a pair and train them specifically for on-reserve and inner-city work focused on reducing harm and recidivism instead of punishing offenders.

Create a volunteer group of specially trained people (part bouncer, part therapist, part guidance counsellor, part drill sergeant, etc) that will live in prison, bear witness to what goes on, and do their best to advocate for the well-being of prisoners.

Allow indigenous groups autonomy over justice on unceded land or on reserves (that's a spicy one)

Mandate that the Senate must include an indigenous quota and create a bunch of new MPs of reserves so that indigenous people are electing their own federal politicians.

Give on-reserve schools the same per-student funding that the average Canadian gets (this will be the average of all provinces).

Give one hour per day off-reserve and three hours per day on-reserve of class time in public schools to an as-yet-nonexistent group of indigenous teachers to teach an as-yet-nonexistent history that fairly tells both sides of the story.  No big deal, amirite?

Set national standards for child care and elder care and increase funding for both.

Accept that Canadian law gives indigenous people on unceded land a veto over any resource development.

Anyways, you kind of get the idea.  Some of this could be talked about today, some of it would be political suicide to bring up, so even the Greens know not to raise these ideas.  There is a way forward that isn't just throwing money onto the fire, but it's going to be a difficult, stressful, expensive mess with an uncontrollable outcome and nobody really believes we'll be able to create a consensus that will make the effort worthwhile, so in the meanwhile we keep shoveling money on the fire.  Did you bring some smokies?  You should bring smokies.  This sucker's gonna be burning for a while.  Unless a Wayne Gretzky of politics suddenly shows up and skates to where the justice is going, instead of where the justice is.  I guess that could happen.  Fingers crossed!

Finally, you asked "how far back do you want to go?"  My answer is: until the damage has been healed.  I don't see a way to achieve justice in my lifetime.  Maybe if someone finds a magic wand lying around I guess.

Also I was off regarding the extent of unceded lands.  If you go to https://imgur.com/Jdby1aM you can see that it is smaller than I said - most of BC and the Yukon are unceded, a bit of the NWT is unceded, a smidge of Ontario and a third of Quebec and nearly all of the Maritimes are unceded.  Still, that's a lot of very valuable land.

Okay, it's been fun everyone but I gotta go watch the Oilers, who are not about to wet the bed, nor will their goalie drop a big squidgy turd, thank you for asking.  If there are any Jets fans here, all the best, and I sure hope I end up being the one saying "better you than me." 

I won’t go point by point, but a few main issues: Indigenous policing on reserves is already prevalent.  You can’t have a different set of criminal laws on reserves unless it becomes illegal to leave reserves.  A two-tier justice system is a recipe for disaster.  We could have a whole conversation about the additional fishing, hunting, and other liberties Indigenous enjoy.  A lot of looking the other way happens on smuggling through cross-border reserves.

If you allow reserves to veto all resource and national or provincial infrastructure projects, many if not most national and provincial rail, highway, energy, mineral, and environmental protection projects won’t happen.  There are good reasons why interprovincial projects are subject to federal approval rather than provincial and band council, because otherwise the “Not in my backyard” contingent would make it impossible to have viable trade routes, resource development, manufacturing, and employment.  It would basically turn Canada into a completely uncompetitive backwater.  We saw quite successful attempts to do this over LNG and other pipelines in B.C.    Canada struggles to utilize her own resources and distribute the benefits to her own peoples, Indigenous included.

Again, you have said unceded many times but haven’t identified who has the right or legal title to cede the lands.  In most cases surveyors and settlers entered and settled territories because there were no apparent claimants.  I agree that where a legitimate land claim can be made, it’s the prerogative of the claimant to take their evidence to court, but you seem to assume that there are homeless people sitting on sidelines waiting to get their territory back.  Establishing title that far back is hard to prove and becomes more dubious the more claimants come forward and the farther back in time one has to reach for evidence.

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Zeitgeist and Gritty have embarked on that rare thing: an interesting, informed and edifying discussion on here.  Unfortunately Canada's relationship with its first peoples is barely related to the topic so maybe I can offer something to tie it back.

Marxism has this concept called 'reification', which I roughly understand to be the process of turning abstractions into something real.  For example, money is an abstraction of exchange between people that has turned into something thought to be 'real'.

The tie-in is that the problems you mention could be solved if we do what the 80s corporate types called "thinking out of the box".  That is, to realize that legalities, ownership, symbols of power are meaningless contrivances that should be discarded the moment they fail to serve the common good.  So, "ceding of land" or even ownership and custodianship are "in the box" ideas that, themselves, could stand in the way of truly creative problem solving.

I wish that our public dialogue could foster the imagination and collaboration that you have reflected in your discussion.  Instead we have fake "we care about everybody" Liberals and fake "we are smart and pragmatic" Conservatives who are basically the same.  They are especially similar in their limited vision.

 

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3 minutes ago, Dougie93 said:

you can't have outside the box thinking when you live in an unstable imperialist anachronism like Canada

this is a Confederation of the British Empire not a hippie commune

trying to make it into an hippie commune is simply spreading chaos and dysfunction far and wide

got to save the outside the box thinking

for when unstable imperialist anachronism inevitably unravels

chaos is a ladder

the attempt to make Canada into a hippie commune simply speeds up the process

bring on the fragmentation of confederation

woop woop

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Canada is in essence destroying itself in a fever of posrmodernist catastrophized self loathing

the deconstruction has now reached the threshold of tearing the DNA of the Confederation itself apart

the Westminster Parliament doesn't even function anymore, a Philosper King dictatorship has replaced that

there's not going to be any problems solved by Canada nor in Canada anymore

this is the death throes of Canada, it will not recover

Edited by Dougie93
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Canada was always a weakly cobbled together Confederation of convenience

it was not designed nor built to function without the British Empire

when the British Empire collapsed, Canada was forced to make itself into an American protectorate

now that American hegemony is in decline, so there is nothing to prop Canada up anymore

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12 minutes ago, Yzermandius19 said:

Bye Canada

won't miss you

I'm gonna dance on it's grave

it's all part & parcel of the general decline of the Western Hegenomy, currently Pax Americana

Canada is just one of the weakest and most unstable regimes within that hegenomy

so Canada is simply amongst the first to fall to pieces in the face of the Information Age

a canary in the coalmine

it is exactly as Marshall McLuhan predicted it would be

"a guerrilla information World War Three with no distinction between military & civilian"

Canada simply does not have the durable structures to remain dynamic in the face of this onslaught

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it's laughable the way the Indian Act is discussed, as if it wasn't the whole point of Canada

Canada is an apartheid state and always was

the Indian Act is not tangential, the Indian Act is Canada

you can't have one without the other

end the apartheid state and the Canada baby will go out the window with that bath water

the ball of yarn will unravel until there is nothing left of it

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as the ball of yarn is unravelling, the entrenched elites are becoming ever more panicked

Canada is a structure for empowering the Laurentian Elites

thus why they are resorting to ever more draconian & authoritarian measures

Canada is collapsing out from under the thrones of the elites

this is the tyrannical phase of Plato's Republic, where the corrupt & degenerate elites impose a dictatorship

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1 minute ago, Michael Hardner said:

Ok - it just seems weird to bring up a problem nobody is talking about.  Fair enough.

the topic is "is Canada becoming a communist state"

Dougie is simply describing the ramifications that will occur because it has done so

seems only natural to discuss that considering the topic

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1 minute ago, Michael Hardner said:

Ok - it just seems weird to bring up a problem nobody is talking about.  Fair enough.

I think the analogy is quite apt, Canada as a hippie commune

it's like Jonestown

the postmodernist doomsday cult is driven to make Canada into an utopia, killing Canada in the process

just give the land back to the Indians, maaan

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3 minutes ago, Yzermandius19 said:

Dougie is simply describing the ramifications that will occur because it has done so

I would actually say that the Communism is the ramification of the failed Confederation

Trudeau as Philosopher King dictator, the Westminster Parliament merely window dressing for that

it is because Canada is a power vacuum, the failed Confederation has no power to effect change

this paralysis leads to the elites trying to run everything by authoritarian central planning

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2 minutes ago, Dougie93 said:

I would actually say that the Communism is the ramification of the failed Confederation

Trudeau as Philosopher King dictator, the Westminster Parliament merely window dressing for that

it is because Canada is a power vacuum, the failed Confederation has no power to effect change

this paralysis leads to the elites trying to run everything by authoritarian central planning

true

Canada being unable to tie it's own shoelaces

is what allowed the woke to takeover so swiftly

in the wake of that power vacuum

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1 minute ago, Yzermandius19 said:

true

Canada being unable to tie it's own shoelaces

is what allowed the woke to takeover so swiftly

in the wake of that power vacuum

 

Canada not really being a country at all

merely a cobbled together Confederation of British Colonies which were adversaries not allies

the only point of Canada being to keep the French in, the Americans out, and the Indians down

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postmodern decontructionism is obviously a pestilence when it degenerates into a self loathing doomsday cult

but that doesn't mean the deconsructionists are wrong about Canada

you don't need to write a ten page essay to explain Canadian Confederation

shady backroom deal made to keep the French in, the Americans out, and the Indians down, since 1867

there is no way to make Canada into a people's republic without bringing Canada down in the process

which is exactly what is in progress as we speak, lift up your heads and look around

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20 hours ago, bush_cheney2004 said:

 

And still, Canada has purposely sought to benefit from American economic and military power as a matter of policy to preserve a "rules based order".   Chrystia Freeland explained this obvious reality to Parliament in 2017:

 

 

Accordingly, Canada is far less prepared for a future world without a "rules based order" and purposeful American isolationism.   Unlike depending on the Americans after Britain's decline, there is nobody else to run to...again.

I agree with your interpretation, but I'm not sure what else Canada should have done.  Given that we can't beat them in a fight, even an unfair, arbitrary "rules based order" is preferable because it gives us an avenue to dispute things such as softwood lumber duties, however ineffectually, without getting thousands of pounds of bombs dropped on us.  Americans really get off on dropping bombs on people who can't fight back, it's kind of their thing.

Basically, if America is our buddy we are secure from any kind of invasion - America won't allow another military power to exist in the Western Hemisphere if they can help it.  This is why we dismantled quite formidable merchant navies after both world wars.  If we want to be America's buddy, we have to trade with them at a moderate disadvantage.  However, we have a big advantage over much of the rest of the world at figuring out how to navigate their so-called "rules based order" because we have so many cultural similarities, which allows us to try to project "soft power" as mediators on the world stage.  Canada loves to see itself as the quiet voice of reason in the room when world leaders gather.  Is this actually true?  Probably not, but maybe every once in a while, and it makes a useful propaganda point.

If America is not our buddy things get a lot dicier.  Now we're worried about everything from their Air Force dropping bombs on us to their CIA assassinating our elected officials so that fascistic juntas can be installed, allowing their corporations to exploit our resources for pennies on the dollar, just like happened to many countries in Latin America.  I have no trouble believing that the media apparatus that convinced Americans Iraq was behind 9/11 and had WMD, and convinced Americans to bail out the banks that caused the financial crash, and convinced Americans not to hold anyone to account for either of those debacles, would be able to convince Americans that Canada is the enemy.  You play ball with America, or they stick the bat up your...

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