Why?
Sunshine posts a lot, but if given feedback does remove links if they’re not good.
Jesus, I know some people have weirdly hostile reactions to the Examiner, but come on.
Lmao they post like 50+% of the content in this community. Enjoy your empty feed tailored to only opinions you agree with.
I think even worse than voting for fear and resentment, they voted for actual fascism. The guy openly stated that he was going to try to ignore Canadian rights and freedoms without any ambiguity. It’s not like him twisting turning Canada into a 3rd world resource economy as a great boost to the economy, or that saving the 1% billions in taxes as a way for the average Canadian to save their money.
One of PP’s mandates was to use the notwithstanding clause to bypass Canadian rights and freedoms to jail people without a trial. It was one of his platforms, and there was zero ambiguity that he intended to do it exactly as he stated.
The fact that this wasn’t a red flag for over 40% of Canadians and an immediate reason to distance themselves from him, it honestly scares me. Because this is how Hitler and Mussolini came into power, along with many other of history’s worst leaders. They sounded reasonable at first, with only one or two shady bits to their mandates, only for those shady bits to be the core that started the greatest evils in the world.
Before the election, I was able to see this multiple poll breakdown that was kind of surprising. If you were under 35 and male, you were more likely to have voted CPC. Every other group (esp. women under 35 and everyone over 65) was more likely to vote LPC. This tells me Poilievre’s social media campaign, which you may recall was highly “manosphere”-coded was effective with the target group. The good news then is that (while not making the same mistake as the CPC and forgetting other demographics exist), we can reach these people with a smart approach online.
I think Rational National has a good point in that video I linked that maybe these folks who were taken in by the Conservatives were under the impression because the Liberals were in charge as long as they can remember, everything is solely their fault. They’re likely missing the overall historical context that we can’t afford to keep the tax burden on poor people (especially as wages stagnate) instead of the rich (whose incomes have been exploding up until Trump’s market crashes) as we’ve been doing increasingly for decades upon decades.
It certainly is possible. Most people have shitty memories for anything that they’re not passionate about, and very few people are passionate about politics or how things change around them. Just the latest outrage article more often than not.
But I do think that there is also a connection to the fact that the left is sorely underrepresented in social media as well. And I don’t just mean in terms of content creators, but platform owners as well. After all, even if most tech bros that started up all our favourite online media giants, once they reach the top, every single force in the capatalistic world that let them get on top is now a force that drives them hard to the right. Legislation makes it harder to earn more money when you’ve already squeezed out the easy and legal opportunities. The left is all about change and democratizing things, where the corporate giants have already consolidated so much of the economy that this is a legitimate threat to their power. Not to mention that making it easier for entrepreneurs to start up new companies without relying on venture capital influence to avoid the risk of personal bankruptcy is a direct threat that may topple their empire if they can’t buy them out (or will be bought by someone else who already is a direct threat).
And then there’s the fact that advertising money flock towards right wing content creators because not only are they more commercially safe since they are far less likely to call out corporations doing bad things, but they’re also more willing to take money from unethical sources. I mean, how often does right wing youtubers advertise energy drinks and protein powders? Or what about supplements or “muscle enhancers”?
The double whammy of right wing media giants and right wing content creators make it really hard for the left to get their voice out at all, especially to the young who exclusively get their news from these sources.
I mean, imagine how many think that the stuff they hear on facebook is actual legitimate news despite them officially not allowing Canadian news to be advertised on their services?
Absolutely. Major media is helpful only to confirm basic facts, while touting stale and one-sided opinions, so we need to make inroads in other ways. Folks who are good with memes can tear into the CPC’s lies about who they’ve really represented from the beginning (while also tearing into the LPC’s failures to live up to their promises). Meanwhile, connected folks in blue collar industries and services ideally could get more facts out. It is a big problem how well-meaning professionals-- who tend to snatch up party leadership positions-- regularly and routinely disrespect and alienate other working people without even realizing it.
We have 4 years to get canadians away from Twitter and Facebook to Mastodon and Friendica to reduce the amount of influence the oligarchs have on our comms.
Lets bring back the vote subsidy, limit the contribution limits to $100 a year, lower the voting age to 16 and pass proportional representation!
lower the voting age to 16
I don’t agree with this, mostly because that age range is perhaps the most influenced by social media and “misogynist male influencers”.
They are too young to know better at that age, and to throw away their future because Joe Rogan or Andrew “The Rapist” Tate manipulated them is just not what this country needs.
But an overhaul of our election system is needed, and laws need to be made that protect people from the barrage of misinformation we are seeing more of every day.
Is this really your experience with +16 years old? If so, you should get your province to invest more in education.
They(16yo) can drive, they can enlist.
In most provinces, they are choosing their career, trade, university, and with fresh knowledge of history and geopolitics they get from schools.
And there is no magical switch that flips when you turn 18. The sooner they start thinking about their future, the better.
Many countries already allowed 16 years old people to vote, for more than 20 years, and they did not become a misogynist hell-hole.
Is this really your experience with +16 years old? If so, you should get your province to invest more in education.
That’s the problem, though. Young males voters are swaying heavily to right-wing parties, and it’s thought that this is because of the online influence of bad actors.
Of course, any age can be manipulated, but far fewer are being swayed by these “influencers” as age increases.
And a lack of education ties in with voting Conservative, so there’s no incentive for the Cons to change this. They benefit from young, naive, undereducated voters.
They(16yo) can drive, they can enlist.
I’m against that, too. Young drivers are notoriously bad at driving, and have poor judgment on the road.
In most provinces, they are choosing their career, trade, university, and with fresh knowledge of history and geopolitics they get from schools.
Yes, of course. It’s a transition age.
Many countries already allowed 16 years old people to vote, for more than 20 years, and they did not become a misogynist hell-hole.
Other countries may not (at least, not now) have a problem with social media influencing their young voters. So, it may “work” for them, but not for North Americans.
I’m not trying to throw this age group under the bus. It’s THEIR future that we vote for, and they really should be playing a role in shaping that future.
But I’d want them to be making an informed vote, without the voice of right-wing extremists in their heads. At this present time, I don’t think that could happen, because these influencers run unchecked, and it DOES impact how our youth think and act.
Also, setting the age to 16 pretty much means the average person won’t vote until 18 based on election timing. If government is elected when you’re 17, you might not vote until you are 21.
I have mixed feelings about Proportional Representation, I’m worried it would lessen the “local candidate” element of the election. I like the concept of voting for a local representative from my area in Parliament, no matter their party affiliation.
Then again, I like the theory behind Ranked Ballots, but unfortunately in practice they tend to just funnel third party votes to the main parties, which is not right either.
I suppose we could go with PR/STV and triple the amount of representatives to still have some sort of local area representative scheme… but that could get expensive and unwieldy very quick.
Could we get rid of the Senate and have two houses? One house small riding FPTP for local area representation, and one house be party based PR by province?
Had you not heard of mixed-member proportional rep?
If you really like the local representation that could be for you. The only recent time I can think regional MPs actually coming into play is the heating oil exemption, though.
I haven’t, that’s really interesting, slightly on the complicated side to sell to people though.
So you vote both for candidate and party seperately and then once all the candidates are put in seats, they add more representatives designated by the parties to balence the party representation?
Local representation is not great for passing laws, but it is amazing to get things fixed that got bound up in the bureaucracy. Like expedite a passport, or figure out why a pension didn’t come. Having your MLA or MP speak for you often has a greater impact than going solo. And it nice that your repw usually has a local office in reasonable travel distance, if you want to speak to them in person.
Let’s throw a wrench into things: Dual Member Proportional, a system that doesn’t send people who haven’t directly stood for election to Ottawa.
I have mixed feelings about Proportional Representation, I’m worried it would lessen the “local candidate” element of the election. I like the concept of voting for a local representative from my area in Parliament, no matter their party affiliation.
That is a misnomer as proportional representation is a family of electoral systems. The party-lists is the electoral system that lacks the local representation however Mixed-Member Proportional & Single Transferable Vote both retain it.
I suppose we could go with PR/STV and triple the amount of representatives to still have some sort of local area representative scheme… but that could get expensive and unwieldy very quick.
The elections would cost the same as it would only cost money at first to convert the system from first-past-the-post to the single transferable vote / mixed-member proportional.
local candidate
I used to think like that, until I realized that I never met the past 3 representatives from my riding. They sent representatives to knock on my door during the campaign saying yes to any issue I brought up, they never hold town halls, and only returned generic messages when we tried to contact them - when they answer.
The person elected this time does not live in my riding.
All of them voted with the party, and never proposed anything useful.
That was one of the questions I had for the candidates knocking this time, would you vote against the party if their decision would harm “us”(the riding)?
Today, I rather vote for anyone (or party/independent list) in Canada that would relate to my expectations. I do not care where they live, only that they do a good job.
If people didn’t get their butts out to vote, we’d have a conservative government right now.
There’s been a huge increase in U.S. influenced right-wing extremism in Canada and it contributed to the increase in conservative seats in gouvernent.
Don’t kid yourselves. Just because P.P. didn’t get elected or the Conservatives didn’t get a majority, it doesn’t mean there isn’t a rise of right-wing extremism in Canada.
CBC demonstrated that several Canadian subreddits (which are toxic cesspits rife with divisieness) are run by Russian bots so it’s not just US influence.
If we don’t do something about social media, disinformation, and voting reform, we will not have a Canada to protect after the next election.
It will be difficult to impossible to hold onto a country that nearly half the population would freely give away without a fight.
Unfortunately, the call to “do something” about social media will only result in renewed efforts to do the wrong thing, as the previous government attempted. Facebook will be made to behave slightly better at the cost of creating a new regulatory system that reinforces its power and makes Canada legally dangerous for fedi instances or other alternatives.
Go on Mr. Carney, please prove me wrong.
