One of the things that bugs me at this point, is it’s been like two years coming, and these business are still largely reliant on the USA market. Like if you’re a business owner, and your one major trading region is a dumpster fire, and you just let it burn for two years, what the fuck?

It’s sorta like people who rebuild homes in areas prone to natural disasters like floods / hurricanes etc. You can see the history, you have no reason to think that the trend is going to reverse, you know all your shits gonna get wrecked, but you just keep pretending like it’s all fine.

zzz. PP’s conservatives had a DOGE-North campaign ready to go, because they thought Musks approach was awesome – there were lots of photos of it coming from their Alberta nerve center, when they thought it’d get them votes, even wearing red MCGA hats and all. Saying Carney’s fucking up things like social services is warranted criticism, yes, but PP would’ve butchered everything. And what’s this nonsense about “He’d keep us in CUSMA!”, the fuck? What is PP, the diaper whisperer? PP would’ve spread his cheeks so far apart to accept Donalds droopy dick, I don’t even know what bizarro rationale you’re using to pretend like he’d somehow magically solve anything at all – if he’d been able to ‘stay’ in the agreement the US wants out of, then he would’ve done it by conceding to every demand ever made by the Americans. And where’s his negotiating expertise coming from exactly anyhow, what with PP’s complete lack of any actual working experience outside of parliament? The states would’ve said “Fentanyl!” and PP would’ve accepted their bullshit messaging, designed a whole propaganda campaign around how fentanyl was “a MASSIVE problem in Canada, HUGE, some even say bigger than those forest fires and stuff!”, then he’d label it as a China drug and start targeting asian immigrants etc. Last election, the Canadian conservatives literally used the same campaign slogans as Trump - “Make Canada Great Again” and “Canada First” bullshit, and you want to pretend like they’d do anything but bend over for Trump? Absolute fantasist horseshit.

But whatever floats your boat I guess, you can suck off conservatives all day for all I care.

Harper gutting it was literally the reason we stopped participating routinely – like it was quite explicitly the reason Canada pulled back troops from most missions, where prior we had participated in every single one. Without routine/experience, shit goes wrong more often.

It’s sorta like… who would you rather for a surgeon, a person that does the procedure you need regularly, or a doctor that does it maybe once every few years?

Then you had a far higher opinion of PP than many of the people I know.

Canadas peace-keeping legacy was ended decades ago – so long ago that the younger generations don’t even recall it, based on notes in this thread.

I think it was Harper that ended it, if I remember right, in the early 00s. Prior, Canada had played some role in practically every UN Peacekeeping mission. Canada’s peacekeepers were semi-sought after by the UN/other nations, because they weren’t trigger happy. Then Harper/the Conservatives, who are supposedly pro-military, defunded things, and our position diminished significantly. I recall an old Italian lady coworker at one of my first jobs being absolutely apoplectic about it. She’d go on rants about how those sorts of missions are exactly how our military ought to get used, and that keeping preparedness/expertise in dealing with disaster zones, as a good chunk of peacekeeping ends up being logistics/resource distribution, helps when the military’s called on to aid in natural disasters etc.

So the booze bans, if I remember right, came in as part of the response to the US imposing tariffs, tariffs they justified with a flimsy excuse of ‘fentanyl!’. The US didn’t like that we responded to their clearly abusive/disrespectful tariffs, by applying more tariffs. Now Carney is negotiating to lower those tariffs in part by ending what little resistance/push-back Canada had shown.

Carney’s disappointing.

Still better than PP.

Soft controls are soft. The Americans would no doubt view the authority of the FN groups at about on par with any other international norm, legal document or trade agreement. That is, a few tiers lower than Trumps used diapers in terms of significance.

They’ve also already setup the narrative that a small ethnically based minority group being able to dictate terms to a majority of voters is undemocratic / anti-American – a sentiment that has enough merit to garner some centrist support, but is extreme enough it can be coopted into more drastic measures. If there’s a vote in favour of separation, and it ends up ‘blocked’, that’ll be grounds for escalation in their view.

Class action cases are mostly just a way for lawyers to get yachts.

If she were assaulted, wouldn’t it be a criminal offense? There was a note in the article (the correctly linked one at least), about how she’d gone to authorities in Hawaii but that the pilot got redirected by the airlines to avoid facing questioning. But like, I’m pretty sure if I went to some other city and raped someone, I’d have a warrant out for my arrest when I got home and would still need to face consequences, especially when such occurs in north america (it’s admittedly less the case for those sickos that do the sex tourist thing in less developed countries, though even those people sometimes face consequences at home.

That the guy wasn’t held accountable makes it seem like the offense was potentially less dramatic / significant, or less clear cut – and the airlines generally lukewarm reaction more understandable.

Eh, this seems a petition I’d rather not sign, in part due to unfamiliarity with the nuance of it.

Right to clean drinking water shouldn’t translate as the government needing to spend a bunch of money to build infrastructure for a really remote group of a tiny number of people – if someone is living in a community of like 100 people in the middle of the northern tundra, I wouldn’t expect the government to have to dedicate a ton of resources to build some sort of water desalination plant nearby, at a cost of milllions of dollars. Especially if the people in that remote community are A) hostile to Canada as a nation, and B) not producing millions of dollars in tax revenue.

Aboriginal title, allowing for “Shared exclusivity” is kinda an over reach in my view as well – many of the FN weren’t friends, in fact many of the west coast tribes routinely practiced slavery, raiding each others tribes for women etc (estimates are that about 25% of most west coast bands, were slaves). When Canada banned slavery at its formation, one of the most impacted groups were west coast First Nations. To pretend that “shared exclusivity” between such bands, bands which weren’t exactly working together, should give them any elevated privilege over general ‘public’ lands, is bonkers – we’ve got tiny bands people claiming title over all of the lower mainland of BC, and we routinely see any ‘modern’ treaty that gets signed instantly challenged by 5 other bands due to the shared exclusivity stuff. We see projects held up because there’s a stream of bands coming forward claiming title, asking for payouts – we’ve had solar farm projects in BC delayed years because of this issue. And it’s one that was created largely by the courts, in the 80s or something, not a concept specifically in the legislation/charter docs – in other words, the concept of ‘shared exclusivity’ is one that the Canadian court systems decreed should be a thing, not something the Canadian public supported: it’s an artificially created concept that screws up a lot of areas. Limiting the scope of government obligations to just specific reserve lands makes sense, given how expansive the aboriginal title stuff is – that whole ‘aboriginal title’ definition may warrant revision.

And lastly, all the modern treaty stuff just feels like its overly one sided and not benefiting the general public good – but rather a minority of increasingly entrenched, biologically defined people. Like there’s a 500 person band in BC that’s shifted over $100 million in tax revenue in the lands they oversee, into a fund just for their ethnically defined group – they pay their members an annual ‘allowance’ of a few thousand bucks, have one time bump payments of 5-20k at like 55 and 65, and so on. And with membership determined by bloodlines, and funding determined primarily by the public purse / tax payers, it can’t help but evoke images of white people creating legislation that gives white people explicit benefits, and how fucked up that would be – especially if 99% of the revenue were coming from non-white demos. Despite the rhetoric/PR campaigns, FN people are just as self-interested as anyone in a capitalist cultural setting, and the modern treaties just make it look like they’re rail roading our government – hell, even our own government negotiates from a position of weakness on these treaties, given that FN people are on the governments side of the negotiating table, and are clearly subject to conflict.

Men aren’t being wronged. They aren’t being impeded. They aren’t being ignored. They are just giving a fair chance to all other groups and picking the best candidate.

I’m curious if your opinion is based on any actual knowledge/background on how the government functions, or even the job application process for working for the federal government. I’ve previously, years ago, applied for essentially a general clerical type position. They literally cut all white guys in round 1 of screening, with letters saying something along the lines of “We’ve eliminated you from consideration at this time as you did not identify as a member of an equity employment group”. When you have a bunch of jobs open, and one of the primary criteria you’re focused on is equity/diversity, it’s one of the very first rounds of cuts involved – you simultaneously want to cut down the number that get called in for further screening to lighten the work load quick, and also don’t want to waste time on candidates who would be eliminated on perfunctory reasons in the final rounds. These programs, as implemented, do not provide a ‘fair chance’ nor result in ‘the best candidate’, but rather they establish a base line minimum threshold required for the position, then filter on race/demographics to determine who gets short listed, then they pick the person they think best suited after that.

Anecdotally, I personally know a couple people that’ve worked for the government since around 2005-ish. One of their main complaints is how it isn’t a meritocracy in any way – people are commonly promoted for optics reasons, even when they have no certifications / skill for the position they’re in. I’ve heard these sorts of stories from people I’ve known for decades, in regards to three different departments at the fed gov.

You are not listening to me. It doesn’t affect “day to day / their kids”. It is not being forced on anyone.

No, I think I’ve responded fine to your earlier comment, and addressed your position. Saying that something is impacting their day to day doesn’t necessarily mean that it needs to be a forced government program through the school system or similar space. I don’t think I ever said they were being ‘forced’ to attend drag story times – in terms of listening to each other, that’s something that I’m pretty sure you injected yourself; from my pov, it’s more that they’re being forced/impacted by the situation/media attention. Their earlier “Yeah, sure, whatever, so long as there’s no followups, let me go about my day” was interrupted: they couldn’t just go about their day, they instead got a constant drip of social media on the subject, and their news cycles became packed with it. They were forced to engage with the subject more, and their more ‘honest’ reactions came out.

As a sorta strange way to try and explain it through a different vehicle – it’s sorta akin to a drinkin buddy and you having a conversation one night, where they suggest some totally batshit activities to do that are stupidly expensive/far-fetched, dangerous, and totally not your thing. At the time, you don’t really think it plausible, and you’re havin a good time with your friend, so you just go along with whatever hair brained idea they come up with. Shortly after, they win the lottery, and tell you to quit your job cause you’re gonna do the batshit bucket list. Suddenly, you gotta contend with the idea that you may actually have to go through with the thing, so you dip. Your position didn’t change on the subject, but your environment changed around you, forcing you to take action / be more honest about your position.

I disagree. Sure, there can be people who get sexual gratification from being in drag, as well as furries, but that doesn’t mean it applies to everyone. Some people like to dress up / perform / be a furry / whatever, just for fun!

And some people, nudists, like to be naked for fun! Doesn’t mean kids should get exposed to it regularly. Doesn’t mean you should have events to help make kids ok with naked adults. There are some things that are generally ‘adult’ oriented, because the borders between the group that does it for ‘fun’ and the other group are so blurry.

I mean, the reason why there is more focus on women’s issues, and racialized issues, etc, is that women have been under-represented in the past, so that’s why there’s more of a focus on them. That’s not to say that men don’t have issue either, but groups who have been under-represented are now getting their representation, etc. Does that mean men don’t have issues too? No, of course not.

So, two comments on this one – First, is that with studies focusing on a narrow/reduced scope, targeting for example just the issues facing women in the TFW system in agricultural areas, and dedicating resources to women’s issues on that front without even assessing whether it’s a genderized issue or one that impacts everyone regardless of gender, government systems have, at the very least the impression, that they’ve over-corrected for a problem that they are now refusing to measure. Wronging men by ignoring them, because women were ignored generations ago, is not a good path forward. Second, many of the forms of “equity” programs in Canada – such as ‘equity employment group’ hiring preferences amongst the federal government, which impede ‘white men’ exclusively due to how we define an ‘equity employment group’ – are implemented without a condition for when the additional supports/“reverse discrimination for equity sake!” will be ‘complete’/done. Like the public sector split was at parity in 2000, give or take. It’s now more lopsided in favour of women, than it was in the 1980s towards men when legislation was put in to ‘even things out’. We still have preferential hiring for women, and it’s been a full generation / ~30 years, with the scales tipping more and more in an inequitable way – but most progressives don’t care, as it’s just men gettin hosed.

So you are saying, with most online and phone interviews, that the results will essentially be wrong because most people will just answer with that they believe is the “right” answer, rather than what they actually think?

Yes/no. I’d put it more like Surveys on certain topics / socially “hot” items, are less reflective of reality ever since the advent of the internet, basically. Influencers and social media sites don’t sell advertising, so much as they sell the ability to skew the conversation / slant things to their preference, by inundating people with spam/propaganda. For years, Canada and the USA’s media channels were aggressively in favour of left-wing ideas, so much so, and for so long, that many people just went along with it. Even more, online campaigns can be heavily skewed by bots/malicious agents. Realistically, I think it’s a better gauge to look at people’s actual behaviours as data points for this sort of thing – particularly when the subject actually impacts their lives. Like people started protesting drag story times, as you noted, a few years back – but could they have protested them even sooner? Not really, as they didn’t start popping up until ~2015ish – at the height of things like Trudeau’s virtue signalling politics. Prior to that, they were fine saying “Yeah, sure, I support trans people doing whatever”, but then it impacted their day to day more / their kids, and suddenly a slice of them took action. Virtue signalling does not reflect reality, nor does it sway opinion given how flimsy those signals generally are.

There’s sexual connotations with drag?

Contrary to what lots of people on here often seem to think, I’m a fairly staunch moderate/green party sort. I’ve happily gone to drag shows with friends, and feel I have a pretty good grasp of it. I’d wager I’ve had more exposure to the community than most. I’d say feigning that it doesn’t have sexual connotations, is like saying a furry is just a person in a costume, no sexual connotations there! Yiff away!

I mean, both can be true. Reminds me of an “All lives matter” type argument.

Yes, both can be true. However, the government studies / funding / attention is focused on genderised issues and promoting certain narratives – ex. “We need to fund programs for women because they’re in precarious work situations up north”. Such programs shift the focus from “workers in precarious positions need help” to virtue signaling nothingness. It inflates the impression that there’s a huge gap in how the two genders are treated, even though talking to people ‘on the ground’, they readily/openly say it impacts everyone, and everyone needs assistance, not just one gender. One of the likely reasons ‘men’ are veering hard to the right, is that the left is viewed as following this genderised approach, funding initiatives / programs based on gender or racial lenses, none of which tend to benefit ‘men’. And our acceptance of our government being so heavily entrenched along gender/racial lines, is so complete that even when a study is shown to be blatantly biased towards highlighting just women’s issues, ignoring the larger issue, the default response from folks is “both can be true”, an inference towards anyone noting the discrepancy being a bigot, and a shrug.

Many polls are anonymous and/or online

True, but this one was online and by phone with interviewer, as per the article. Still, the broader point is that people will answer survey questions based on what they “think” the right answer “should” be, based on things like gov / social media site influences, rather than what they actually think/how they actually would act. If you have no “skin in the game”, certain questions don’t matter to you, so you’ll provide whatever answer is the least likely to get you in trouble at the time. In prior years, saying anything negative about certain topics would get you reprimanded. Not so much these days, in some areas.

Noting Alberta’s gov actions in the article, I wouldn’t say is/was a ‘cause’ of the sentiment changing, though it’d prolly be correlated. You could just as reasonably say that the Schools in BC where they’ve cancelled things like track competitions, eliminated boys/girls races, as a response to the inability to square the gender circle, could also be prompting parents/kids to say “enoughs enough already, we can’t change/turf every aspect of social life to accommodate a tiny minority, there need to be limits”.

No, this simply isn’t true. Most schools just teach acceptance, nothing to do with politics or ideologies.

Seems fitting to point this out, seeing as we’re Canadian and it’s a Canadian heritage moment: the medium is the message. Having things like drag story time’s become widely discussed news items, you could argue that the news media was complicit in fanning the flames – but the act of specifically having people from marginalised, adult life-styles with sexual connotations, interact with kids in an effort to normalize those sorts of lifestyles is a message that’s not lost on more conservative folks.

Idk, I see these kinds of headlines and I can’t help but think about how skewed/messed up government studies/statscan data seems to be. Like there was a study released this year about how women working as TFW’s in the interior/north of BC are mistreated. CBC, I think, went up to talk to people in the region, and they were all like “Women? Everyone, what’s this women only thing? We’re all facing potentially precarious work conditions / abuse from our bosses”. So the data, as presented by our ideologically motivated/biased government, does not reflect the reality on the ground.

I’d argue that acceptance of the rather far-left gender-diversity crowds multitude of genders was always generally low, and largely based on opinions of convenience for people asked. “Do you support gender diversity?” “Well, our government says if I don’t, it’s potentially a hate crime/hate speech – sorta like calling out the genocide in Israel gets termed as such, or questioning the narrative around first nations – so, uh, yes, I support it, sure whatever, so long as there’s no financial commitment involved or followup questions. Let me get back to my life”.

Most older folks are likely ‘fine’ with male/female, gay/lesbian/bi. The two survey questions the article highlights, are specifically if you’d support a family member who came out as trans, and whether people should be free to express their gender however they want. Back in the earlier survey, they didn’t ask the same trans question, so the inferred decrease in support there is totally misleading. As for people expressing themselves, back before the gender folks got pushing and it was mainly viewed as ‘just’ male/female gay/lesbian/bi, you hadn’t had cases like that shop teacher in Ontario dressing up as a garish trans-woman (I believe it was, months and months later, out’d as a fraud he was committing for some benefits etc). You also didn’t have as aggressive a push to educate young children about the fringe cases of sexuality / expose them to that stuff with clearly political/ideological intentions, I mean, no real surprise in my book that people are less inclined to say “Yeah, sure, express away!” and are leaning more towards there being limits when it comes to social spaces.