#conservative party of ontario

[canadianabroadvery]

“...n 2020, the Ford PC government passed the Connecting People to Home and Community Care Act. It facilitates hospital privatization in two ways. First, it allows the expansion of the small number of for-profit hospitals in Ontario. Private, for-profit hospitals have been frozen for years—but this bill modifies the Private Hospital Act to allow them to expand “home and community care” beds. Apparently, “home and community care” can happen in for-profit institutional facilities nowadays.Similarly, the Act also adds unlicensed “residential congregate care settings” as a location for “home and community care services”—with no restrictions on for-profit operators. Instead of public hospitals, these unlicensed congregate care homes would provide rehabilitative, transitional, or other care.Under the previous Mike Harris PC government, home care was largely privatized. The result was chaotic service and very low wages. OCHU/CUPE had to have a pitched battle with University Health Network (UHN) when they contracted out reactivation services to a home care organization at their Hillcrest site. The PSWs operating the beds were paid $16.50 an hour. While OCHU/CUPE was ultimately able to force UHN to take the work back in-house, many more such projects are underway. Like so much of what Ford is up to, a key goal is to reduce the wages for the female hospital workforce....”

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"ITALIAN LABORERS HEAR GOV'T "EVILS"," Toronto Star. June 13, 1934. Page 22. --- Conservative Machine Worse Than Tammany, Claims Major Inwood --- An enthusiastic group of Italian laborers gave their undivided attention to Ian Strachan, Liberal candidate for St. George's riding, and to his campaign manager, Major John Inwood, as they presented the "evils" of the present government, and the remedies the Liberal party would apply, at a meeting held at the Circolo Columbo club on St. Patrick St. last night.

Criticizing the present government on their "salary grab," their extension of their term of office, and the milk control board's advance in the price of milk, which he declared was "squeezing out the harmless little fellows" who could not sell their milk at the new price, Mr. Strachan urged the men to judge the govern- ment on its past record, and then vote Liberal.

"Worse than Tammany Hall ever was at its lowest point," was Major Inwood's description of the "Conservative machine" which he declared he was out to smash.

"Last year only 30 per cent. of the citizens in St. George's voted," he said, "and the Conservative party didn't want the other 60 per cent. to have any chance of voting this year." The speaker declared Conservatives had decided to make up their own lists this year, and for that purpose had sent out two "Tory ward-heelers" to do the enumerating, with a previously prepared list as their guide.

He charged that over 4,600 names had been left off the list, but that, due to tremendous effort, a great many of these had been recently added. He warned Italians to avoid voting for third-party candidates.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

More than 100 Iranian-Canadians sent a letter to Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre on Tuesday calling for an investigation of the party's handling of allegations of Iranian regime interference in an Ontario riding nomination race. Those who signed the letter include academics, physicians and people who lost loved ones on Flight PS752 when it was shot down by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in 2020. Kaveh Shahrooz, an outspoken critic of Iran's regime, announced on social media last month that he was withdrawing from the Conservative nomination contest in the federal riding of Richmond Hill. He said he faced "unprecedented" foreign interference and intimidation during his campaign. Shahrooz also said his pleas to the party for more time to campaign and push back against the interference went "unheeded."

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Tagging @politicsofcanada

[livebyanothernamesosweet]

Canada is a really hard place to be right now. I know all the privileges we have but like most people cannot afford to own a home or rent an apartment. People are drowning in debt trying to live a lifestyle they cannot afford. People can’t afford groceries.

Several of our provincial governments are trying to strip away queer and trans rights (specifically for minors) as populism and fascism creep further into our politics and fear mongering finds its home in our society.

Certain provincial governments are trying to undermine the public education system and our post secondary institutions are under funded and mismanaged. The quality of education is decreasing rapidly.

My province is trying really really hard to underfund and undermine the public health care system in favour of a private one. 2.3 million people in Ontario don’t have a primary care physician. That number will double to 4 million by 2026.

Idk I’ve been watching the shrinking of the middle class and the way politicians (backed by huge corporations) have been stripping away our rights and freedoms for as long as I can remember.

And no one seems to notice or care bc governments distract people with nonsensical threats and fake issues like “queer/trans brainwashing” and no one pays attention to real issues bc they’re all afraid of the boogeyman. It’s exhausting

And they’re going to elect Pierre poo poo face who is homophobic, transphobic, sexist, and is backed by big oil companies. he has often proposed electoral reforms that favour the Conservative Party. He has openly insulted indigenous peoples on days of reconciliation. And he has stated that bitcoin will help solve inflation???

I can’t believe this man is going to the prime minister of Canada

[ricekrispieswithfrootloops]

Oh good, dumber cops

[ppcbug]

Ontario loses 319 acres of farmland everyday in order to make room for our country's out of control immigration numbers!

We have a "Conservative" party who welcomes this and a "Green" party who encourages this destruction of the environment.

It's time to protect Canada's greenspace!

#voteppc to halt immigration

[immaculatasknight]

The illusion we call politics

[kimabutch]

Things are getting increasingly shitty in Canada for trans people and, not gonna lie, it's really stressful! Within the last month:

The Conservative Party of Canada, which is the official opposition party (AKA the party with the second most votes) and has a solid chance of forming the government in the next election, held a convention where they voted overwhelmingly in favour of creating policies to stop gender-affirming medical care for minors (link)

They also officially voted to define "woman" as "female person" and try to stop trans women from being in women's prisons, shelters, locker rooms, and washrooms

Multiple provincial governments are either enacting policies that would require parents' approval in order for trans kids to change their names or pronouns at school, or have officially said that they support forcibly outing kids (link)

A nonbinary teacher in Quebec received threats of violence for using pronoun "Mx" and other Quebec provincial parties complained about "wokeism" and said they wouldn't use the title (link)

And this doesn't include the homophobic & transphobic protests outside pride events throughout the summer or the "Save Our Children" convoy that's being planned for later this month (link), or the tons of shitty things that have happened all through this year, like tons of Ontario trans people (including me!) losing healthcare.

I'm trying to stay as optimistic as possible, knowing just how many trans people and allies there are, but sometimes! It's hard!

Anyways, if you're Canadian, please consider:

Getting involved in local, municipal politics, especially on school boards, to speak out about the need for gender-affirming policies, especially for youth

Showing up (with an organized, prepared group) to counter-protest anti-trans protesters

Keeping track of any anti- or pro-trans bills going around and contacting your MPs & MPPs to let them know what you think of them

Supporting 2SLGBTQ+ charities

Literally never ever voting conservative

And even if you're not Canadian, if you have friends who are Canadian & trans, maybe check in on them? Most Canadian trans people are pretty freaked out right now I think.

[communistkenobi]

Wegenschimmel & McLaughlin (2024) - The Great Canadian Paradox: Jordan Peterson, Right‑Wing Canadian Internet Personalities, and the End of Canadian Exceptionalism?

This article was published this year. what the fuck are you bozos talking about

Jordan Peterson is not "difficult to classify" he is a far-right public figure very plainly and openly, if you have a hard time sussing out his politics you are a moron who takes everything he says at face value and are therefore completely useless as a social scientist

there are many right wing 'populist' politicians in Canadian politics! Doug Ford modeled himself after Trump during his campaign in Ontario in 2018 and has been in power since then. Pierre Poilievre is the current leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and is doing anti-woke transsexual groomer and "stop radical immigration" shit, and the CPC are almost certainly going to win the upcoming federal election. The People's Party of Canada was created in 2018 by Maxime Bernier and quadrupled their vote in the last federal election running on an anti-vax platform. Jason Kenny is a lifelong right-wing anti-abortion homophobic shithead who was premiere of Alberta from 2019-2022. Kevin O'Leary ran for the leader of the CPC! a fucking celebrity host on a stupid reality television show. and these are all off the top of my head, all in the last 5-10 years. if i were writing an academic article about this surely i would find more examples

Proving that all Canadian academics have terminal US brain by bringing up Putin, who is completely irrelevant to domestic right wing organizing and only matters if you've spent the last eight years having public panic attacks about russian interference in US elections

idk i grew up under Stephen Harper, I remember how stupidly right wing the ambient discourse was from adults around me, I remember how right-wing our media was and still is, particularly how openly islamophobic and racist Quebec is, how anti-immigrant and anti-indigenous Ontario is, how racist and christian Alberta is, the current catastrophic opioid crisis in British Columbia because even the granola-munching libs in BC hate the poor and the unhoused. Like I'll grant that Canadian conservativism trends Tory instead of Evangelical, that we have lagged behind the culture war and played catch-up with the US on shit like climate denial and rabid homophobia from our politicians, but I see this claim often in academic discussions of the Canadian right-wing, that we've missed the boat on the far-right movements happening in other western countries, but I never see any facts mustered for this claim, and the arguments I do see are shit like this, plainly and obviously stupid and wrong. The fact that the Canadian right-wing doesnt have the global reach of the United States or the UK/France isn't evidence against far-right movements in Canada, we are a stupid middle power western country with a fraction of the population of the US, why would you expect us to compete with the head of the imperial core

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The conservative movement is cracking up

I'll be in Stratford, Ontario, appearing onstage with Vass Bednar as part of the CBC IDEAS Festival. I'm also doing an afternoon session for middle-schoolers at the Stratford Public Library.

Politics always requires coalitions. In parliamentary democracies, the coalitions are visible, when they come together to form the government. In a dictatorship, the coalitions are hidden to everyone except infighting princelings and courtiers (until a general or minister is executed, exiled or thrown in prison.)

In a two-party system, the coalitions are inside the parties – not quite as explicit as the coalition governments in a multiparty parliament, but not so opaque as the factions in a dictatorship. Sometimes, there are even explicit structures to formalize the coalition, like the Biden Administration's Unity Task Force, which parceled out key appointments among two important blocs within the party (the finance wing and the Sanders/Warren wing).

Conservative politics are also a coalition, of course. As an outsider, I confess that I am much less conversant with the internal power-struggles in the GOP and the conservative movement, though I'm trying to remedy that. Books like Nathan J Robinson's Responding to the Right present a great overview of various conservative belief-systems:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/14/nathan-robinson/#arguendo

And the Know Your Enemy podcast does an amazing job of diving deep into right-wing beliefs, especially when it comes to identifying fracture lines in the conservative establishment. A recent episode on the roots of contemporary right-wing antisemitism in the paleocon/neocon split was hugely informative and fascinating:

https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/know-your-enemy-in-search-of-anti-semitism-with-john-ganz/

Political parties are weak institutions, liable to capture and hospitable to corruption. General elections aren't foolproof or impervious to fraud, but they're miles more robust than parties, whose own leadership selection processes and other key decisions can be made in the shadows, according to rules that can be changed on a whim:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/30/weak-institutions/

Which means that parties are brittle, weak vessels that we rely on to contain the volatile mixture of factions who might actually hate each other, sometimes even more than they hate the other party. Remember the defenestration of GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy? That:

https://apnews.com/article/mccarthy-gaetz-speaker-motion-to-vacate-congress-327e294a39f8de079ef5e4abfb1fa555

Even outsiders like me know that there's a deep fracture in the Republican Party, with Trumpists on one side and the "establishment" on the other side. Reading accounts of the 2016 GOP leadership race, I get the distinct impression that Trump's win was even more shocking to party insiders than it was to the rest of us.

Which makes sense. They thought they had the party under control, knew where its levers were and how to pull them. For us, Trump's win was a terrible mystery. For GOP power-brokers, it was a different kind of a nightmare, the kind where you discover that controls to the the car you're driving in high-speed traffic aren't connected to anything and you're not really the driver.

But as Trump's backers – another coalition – fall out among each other, it's becoming easier for the rest of us to understand what happened. Take FBI informant Peter Thiel's defection from the Trump camp:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/12/silicon-valley-billionaire-donors-presidential-candidates/

Thiel was the judas goat who led tech's reactionary billionaires into Trump's tent, blazing a trail and raising a fortune on the way. Thiel's support for Trump was superficially surprising. After all, Thiel is gay, and Trump's running mate, Mike Pence, openly swore war on queers of all kinds. Today, Thiel has rebuffed Trump's fundraising efforts and is reportedly on Trump's shit-list.

But as a Washington Post report – drawing heavily on gossiping anonymous insiders – explains. Thiel has never let homophobia blind him to the money and power he stands to gain by backing bigots:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/12/silicon-valley-billionaire-donors-presidential-candidates/

Thiel bankrolled Blake Masterson's Senate race, despite Masterson's promise to roll back marriage equality – and despite the fact that Masterton attended Thiel's wedding to another man.

According to the post, the Thiel faction's abandonment of Trump wasn't driven by culture war issues. Rather, they were fed up with Trump's chaotic, undisciplined governance strategy, which scuttled many opportunities to increase the wealth and power of America's oligarchs. Thiel insiders complained that Trump's "character traits sabotaged the policy changes" and decried Trump's habit of causing "turmoil and chaos…that would interfere with his agenda" rather than "executing relentlessly."

For Trump's base, the cruelty might be the point. But for his backers, the cruelty was the tactic, and the point was money, and the power it brings. When Trump seemed like he might use cruel tactics to achieve power, his backers went along for the ride. But when Trump made it clear that he would trade opportunities for power solely to indulge his cruelty, they bailed.

That's an important fracture line in the modern American conservative coalition, but it's not the only one.

Writing in the BIG newsletter, Matt Stoller and Lee Hepner describes the emerging conservative split over antitrust and monopoly:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/is-there-an-establishment-plan-to

Antitrust has been the centerpiece of the Biden Administration's most progressive political project. For the left wing of the Dems, blunting corporate power is seen as the necessary condition for rolling back the entire conservative program, which depends on oligarch-provided cash infusions, media campaigns, and thinktank respectability.

But elements of the right have also latched onto antitrust, for reasons of their own. Take the Catholic traditionalists who see weakening corporate power as a path to restoring a "traditional" household where a single breadwinner can support a family:

https://www.capitalisnt.com/episodes/when-capitalism-becomes-tyranny-with-sohrab-ahmari

There's another reason to support antitrust, of course – it's popular. There are large, bipartisan majorities opposed to monopoly and in favor of antitrust action:

https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Antitrust_Policy_poll_results.pdf

Two-thirds of Americans support anti-monopoly laws. 70% of Americans say monopolies are bad for the economy. The Biden administration is doing more on antitrust than any presidency since the Carter years, but 52% of Americans haven't heard about it:

https://www.ft.com/content/c17c35a3-e030-4e3b-9f49-c6bdf7d3da7f

There's a big opportunity latent in the facts of antitrust's popularity, and the Biden antitrust agenda's obscurity. So far, the Biden administration hasn't figured out how to seize that opportunity, but some Dems are trying to grab it. Take Montana Senator John Tester, a Democrat in a Trump-voting state, whose campaign has taken aim at the meat-packing monopolies that are screwing the state's ranchers.

The right wants in on this. At a Federalist Society black-tie event last week during the National Lawyer's Convention, Biden's top antitrust enforcers got a warm welcome. Jonathan Kanter, the DOJ's top antitrust cop, was praised onstage by Todd Zywicki, whom Stoller and Hepner call "a highly influential law professors," from George Mason Univeristy, a fortress of pro-corporate law and economics. Zywicki praised the DoJ and FTC's new antitrust guidelines – which have been endlessly damned in the WSJ and other conservative outlets – as a reasonable and necessary compromise:

https://fedsoc.org/events/national-press-club-event

Even Lina Khan – the bogeywoman of the WSJ editorial page – got a warm reception at her fireside chat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FwdAxOSznE

And the convention's hot Saturday ticket was "a debate between two conservatives over whether social media platforms had sufficient monopoly power that the state could regulate them as common carriers":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwoO7bZajXk

This is pretty amazing. And yet…lawmakers haven't gotten the memo. During markup for last week's appropriations bill, lawmakers inserted a flurry of anti-antitrust amendments into the must-pass legislation:

https://www.economicliberties.us/press-release/fsgg-approps-bill-must-support-enforcers-not-kneecap-them/#

These amendments were just wild. Rep Scott Fitzgerald (R-WI) introduced an amendment that would give companies carte blanche to stick you with unlimited junk fees, and allow corporations to take away their workers' rights to change jobs through noncompetes:

https://www.congress.gov/congressional-report/118th-congress/house-report/269

Another amendment would block the FTC from enforcing against "unfair methods of competition." Translation: the FTC couldn't punish companies like Amazon for using algorithms to hike prices, or for conspiring to raise insulin prices, or its predatory pricing aimed at killing small- and medium-sized grocers.

An amendment from Rep Kat Cammack (R-FL) would kill the FTC's "click to cancel" rule, which will force companies to let you cancel your subscriptions the same way you sign up for them – instead of making you wait on hold to beg a customer service rep to let you cancel.

Another one: "a provision to let auto dealers cheat customers with undisclosed added fees":

https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-118hr4664rh/pdf/BILLS-118hr4664rh.pdf

Dems got in on the action, too. A bipartisan pair, Rep Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Rep Lou Correa (D-FL), unsuccessfully attempted to strip the Department of Transport of its powers to block mergers, which were most recently used to block the merger of Jetblue and Spirit:

https://www.congress.gov/amendment/118th-congress/house-amendment/640

And 206 Republicans voted to block the DoT from investigating airline price-gouging. As Stoller and Hepner point out, these reps serve constituents from low-population states that are especially vulnerable to this kind of extraction.

This morning, Jim Jordan hosted a Judiciary Committee meeting where he raked DOJ antitrust boss Jonathan Kanter over the coals, condemning the same merger guidelines that Zywicki praised to the Federalist Society:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/7jxc8dp8erhe1q3wpndre/GOP-oversight-hearing-memo-11.13.23.pdf?rlkey=d54ur91ry3mc69bta5vhgg13z&dl=0

Jordan's prep memo reveals his plan to accuse Kanter of being an incompetent who keeps failing in his expensive bids to hold corporate power to account, and being an all-powerful government goon who's got a boot on the chest of American industry. Stoller and Hepner invoke the old Yiddish joke: "The food at this restaurant is terrible, and the portions are too small!"

Stoller and Hepner close by wondering what to make of this factional split in the American right. Is it that these members of the GOP Congressional caucus just haven't gotten the memo? Or is this a peek at what corporate lobbyists home to accomplish after the 2024 elections?

They suggest that both Democrats and Republican primary contesters in that race could do well by embracing antitrust, "Establishment Republicans want you to pay more for groceries, healthcare, and travel, and are perfectly fine letting monopoly corporations make decisions about your daily life."

I don't know if Republicans will take them up on it. The party's most important donors are pathologically loss-averse and unwilling to budge on even the smallest compromise. Even a faint whiff of state action against unlimited corporate power can provoke a blitz of frenzied scare-ads. In New York state, a proposal to ban noncompetes has triggered a seven-figure ad-buy from the state's Business Council:

https://www.timesunion.com/state/article/noncompete-campaign-raises-state-lobbying-18442769.php

It's hard to overstate how unhinged these ads are. Writing for The American Prospect, Terri Gerstein describes one: "a hammer smashes first an alarm clock, then a light bulb, with shards of glass flying everywhere. An ominous voice predicts imminent doom. Then, for good measure, a second alarm clock is shattered":

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-11-10-business-groups-reflexive-anti-worker-demagogy/

Banning noncompetes is good for workers, but it's also unambiguously good for business and the economy. They "reduce new firm entry, innovation by startups, and the ability of new firms to grow." 44% of small business owners report having been blocked from starting a new company because of a noncompete; 35% have been blocked from hiring the right person for a vacancy due to a noncompete. :

https://eig.org/noncompetes-research-brief/

As Gerstein writes, it's not unusual for the business lobby to lobby against things that are good for business – and lobby hard. The Chamber of Commerce has gone Hulk-mode on simple proposals to adapt workplaces for rising temperatures, acting as though permitting "rest, shade, water, and gradual acclimatization" on the jobsite will bring business to a halt. But actual businesses who've implemented these measures describe them as an easy lift that increases productivity.

The Chamber lobbies against things its members support – like paid sick days. The Chamber complains endlessly about the "patchwork" of state sick leave rules – but scuttles any attempt to harmonize these rules nationally, even though members who've implemented them call them "no big deal":

https://cepr.net/report/no-big-deal-the-impact-of-new-york-city-s-paid-sick-days-law-on-employers/

The Chamber's fight against American businesses is another one of those fracture lines in the conservative coalition. Working with far right dark money groups, they've worked in statehouses nationwide to roll back child labor laws:

https://www.epi.org/blog/florida-legislature-proposes-dangerous-roll-back-of-child-labor-protections-at-least-16-states-have-introduced-bills-putting-children-at-risk/

They also fight tooth-and-nail against minimum wage rises, despite 80% of their members supporting them:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/04/leaked-documents-show-strong-business-support-for-raising-the-minimum-wage/

The spectacle of Republicans in disarray is fascinating to watch and even a little exciting, giving me hope for real progressive gains. Of course, it would help if the Democratic coalition wasn't such a mess.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/14/when-youve-lost-the-fedsoc/#anti-buster-buster

Image: Jason Auch, modified https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Antarctic_mountains,_pack_ice_and_ice_floes.jpg

CC BY 2.0

[canadianabroadvery]

“ ... our democratic rights and the environment are still under attack.

Today the key issue is health care. The Premier has introduced a bill that basically offers to the highest bidder a significant portion of our health care system. But you can still use your OHIP card. Right. And I’ve got a bridge I can sell you. When Mike Harris tried something similar the labour movement and social movements joined together for a massive one-day general strike. It didn’t change anything because Mike Harris was a sociopath who never backed down but now we have Doug Fraud, who will back down the minute he thinks he’s in trouble. So where’s the trouble? ... “

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Col. W. H. Price Welcomed to Windsor by Prominent Conservatives," Border Cities Star. April 20, 1934. Page 3. --- MOTORING down from London this morning, Colonel the Honorable W. H. Price, Ontario's Attorney-General, and Mrs. Price, checked in at the Prince Edward Hotel early this afternoon. Col. Price is to be the chief speaker tonight at a dinner preceding a dance in the hotel under auspices of the Young Canada Conservative Club. Аs a dominant figure of the Henry Cabinet, Col. Price is expected to impart tidings of paramount importance in view of the approaching dissolution of the Ontario Legislature. In fact, his address tonight may be regarded as the opening gun of the Conservative campaign in Essex County. Here is a view of Col. and Mrs. Price and some of the local Conservative dignitaries who welcomed them upon their arrival in Windsor. Left to right: Mr. Norman L. Spencer, president of the Young Canada Conservative Club; Mr. Fred K. Jasperson, honorary president of the same organization; the Attorney-General, Hon. Paul Poisson, government member of the Ontario Legislature in Essex North; Mrs. Price, Mrs. J. Fred Reid, wife of the retiring government member in Windsor-Sandwich, and Mrs. Walker Whiteside, Col Price spoke at Walkerville Collegiate this afternoon.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Paranoia and confusion is running through conservative circles in Southwestern Ontario as word spreads that Canada’s spy agency is asking questions about India and a local Conservative nomination vote last year. Conservative MP Arpan Khanna has represented Oxford since a byelection last summer, which followed a chaotic nomination battle earlier that year. Khanna is a well-connected former Jason Kenney staffer and also served as Ontario co-chair of Pierre Poilievre’s leadership campaign. Khanna, who tried but failed to win a seat in Brampton in 2019, continues to be a subject of gossip in local Conservative circles, aspersions the Conservative MP has attributed to bitter internal political rivalries and racism.

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Tagging @politicsofcanada

[applesauce42069]

you're so lucky to not live in america

when i was a young child, in my mind, america consisted of Florida, which is where Disney is, and California, which is where Far Away Disney is and also where they make all the movies. Also new york, Arizona (my dad likes Arizona) and.. the rest? I just knew it was the place where THINGS HAPPENED. I watched a LOT of USAmerican TV and movies, like MOSTLY, and i imagined it as this big shiny place. i never wondered why i didn't live there, though. anyways the first president i remember is Obama and i became politically aware during the 2016 election (I was 13) and the Trump election and I remember how crushed my dad was and nothing politically was real to me until that moment. thats when i switched from being an unaware child to a rapidly learning teen. I am not an American citizen, but i was brought into politics by an American political event.

In Canada we have more than two major parties but really only two ever win the Prime Ministry, the Liberals and Conservatives. I don't know if Canadian politics followed American trends before Trump but like. The wave of Trumpism hit Canada too. Not everyone, that's for sure, but the people who were already right wing got more right wing. Now we have the conservative party adopting anti-trans policies because thats what the Republicans are doing and we have the same fucking social media. CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Company) - AND- CNN were the main news channels watched around me growing up.

And like. I remember seeing a confederate flag in rural Ontario not an hour out of the liberal voting city of Toronto. I have someone very dear in my life who is Filipino, and she told me she would love to move to the country with her daughter and husband but people are just racist there! I had a friend who grew up in Alberta and he taught be the word Kike. He'd learned it at school, when he was called it for being a Jew.

I don't know what to say. I'm glad I'm not a USAmerican and that i don't live there. I truly truly am. But i need you all to understand its NOT JUST YOU. Your country has so much goddamn fucking influence that if you go down, many will go down with you.

VOTE FOR KAMALA FUCKING HARRIS OKAY

[thiswaycomessomethingwicked]

Street meat and raccoons! I’m surprised lord haven’t gone for Run Over by Premier Doug Ford considering all the people that he’s almost run over and his dislike of Tory

Please enjoy this niche Toronto humour. Also vote! Even if you have no fucking clue what I’m on about.

[play-now-my-lord]

sorry if he's a son of a bitch or something but the idea that Ontario elected a guy named "John Tory" head of the conservative party there is endlessly funny to me. IRL version of that meme where the protagonist of a shooter's last name is the name of the shooter