Maple leaf ragged: what ails Canada?

[CHIMO]

There's trouble brewing in Canada.

It's difficult to perceive on first glance. In Toronto, the air is clean, crime rates are low and healthcare is universal. Yet an undercurrent of anxiety courses through the country's public discourse and its media; it dominates conversations in coffee shops and university hallways. A volley of recent polarising political developments has led many Canadians to ask whether their country's reputation as a tolerant, environmentally conscious international peacemaker is suddenly in doubt.

A harsh crackdown on illegal immigrants has belied the notion of a country open to incomers. Quebec has elected a separatist provincial government, triggering political violence. The extraction of oil from the vast tar sands of Alberta has proven hugely controversial, as has the marginalisation of the country's First Nations indigenous people. In foreign policy, Canada is increasingly toeing the US line, most recently cutting diplomatic ties with Iran. And its Afghanistan deployment has been tainted by allegations of complicity in the torture of detainees.

Some, though not all, of this tendency has been blamed on the country's conservative leadership, which gained a parliamentary majority in May last year. The prime minister, Stephen Harper, has tightened immigration policy, struck a hard line in the Middle East and adjusted environmental policy to encourage controversial oil extraction programmes in the country's vast northern hinterlands.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/14/maple-leaf-what-ails-canada

[Warpy]

1. Harper and his party have been in office too damned long.

It's high time for them to go and I think most people know it. The message just needs to be brought to him and his party.

Conservatives suck. Every time they get into office anywhere on the planet, everything goes from being in color to turning grey. While that might be a relief to weary eyes in the beginning, it soon gets stifling.

Canada will come back to itself when Harper is gone.

[CHIMO]

2. Sounds Great

So let it be.

[PDJane]

3. That's my thought, too.

The Harper administration is secretive, neo-con and Christian dominionist, and the only reason he has managed to stay in power is by taking a page from the US vote rigging. This is one very nasty man, a Romney soul mate.

[DissidentVoice]

4. Some thoughts from my chiropractor...

My chiropractor is Canadian (from Chatham, Ontario) and I live within walking distance of the border. I asked him about this while he was cracking my back this past week.

He said that it's cyclical, that PQ governments (and this is not a majority government; Pauline Marois is going to have to cut deals to govern) tend to come and go and that Quebec will never leave Canada...because they couldn't make it on their own. The "want list" they have to be "independent" isn't "independence" at all:

1. Still be covered under Canadian health care
2. All military hardware in Quebec turned over to them, including a major shipyard and a wing of CF-18 fighters
3. Still use the Canadian dollar
4. Still be able to use Canadian passports
5. Assume they will automatically be welcomed into NATO, NORAD, the UN...and the COMMONWEALTH (!)
6. Have full rights of employment/movement in TROC (The Rest Of Canada)

All this...but no contribution (taxes paid to Ottawa) from them. He called bullshit, some of my relatives around Kitchener, Ontario call bullshit, and I call bullshit.

Re Stephen Harper...he still doesn't come anywhere near being as far to the loony right as the Republican Party here. If he were to, for example, call for an American-type health care (non)system in Canada, he would probably be looking at a vote of no confidence so fast he'd shit himself. He won't be in forever...parties don't seem to be as dynastic in Canada as they are here.

The New Democratic Party, which is practically Marxist by U.S. standards (and which I would support if I lived in Canada), holds the position of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition in Ottawa...and the separatist Bloc Quebecois lost all but four of its 47 seats.

Canada has a history of surprising political turnovers. After a more-than-decade-long (Joe Clark aside) of Liberal/Trudeau government, they elected the Tories and Brian Mulroney, who ended up being quite unpopular, then most of the '90s and '00s being under Liberal government (Jean Chretien, Paul Martin) again, then Harper.

Maybe it's just "the grass is greener" mentality, but I have more faith in the Canadian electorate than perhaps they do themselves.