[MrMatt]

Yeah, there is something about narcissistic populists who are supported by a cult of personality.
Who feel free to interfere with the justice department, and expunge dissenters from their party.

Trudeau is just the lightweight Trump. At least one of them is out of office.

 

[MrMatt]

It is really interesting phenomena how people don't see how what is happening in US politics is precisely what is happening in Canadians politics. Just replace Trump's name with Trudeau's, change dates, and you have exact same thing.

They can't see it, because they're blinded by their love/hate for Trudeau/Trump.

 

[MrMatt]

What nonsense. But I guess this is becoming a far-right talking point, because @MrMatt says this a lot as well.

Among all western countries (US, Canada, Europe), Trump is the only one who tried to use his goons to overturn the democratic process.
Trump is the only one who tried to install himself into power.
Trump is the only one who tried to declare the elections invalid.

No politician in Canada or Europe has ever done this, in recent decades. That's because we take pride in freedom and democracy.

I'm not disputing that Trump went too far trying to stay in power.
What I am saying is that the Canadian Trump Jr does similar (though lesser) things here.

I've been very clear that I don't think Trudeau is as bad as Trump, just he shares the same moral values, and exhibits some of the same behavior patterns.

If it's a "far right" talking point that both Trudeau and Trump put pressure on their AG to act contrary to the laws of their respective nations, then we have bigger problems.

It should be a concern to EVERYONE that these guys think they're above the law.

Anyone who thinks the illegal and unethical actions of Trump and Trudeau are "okay" because it's "their guy" is part of the problem.

Again, when the leader of your nation does bad things, you shouldn't support them out of blind partisanship.

 

[MrMatt]

So it appears to me that Americans weren't happy with what Trump accomplished, while Canadians continue to be happy with the leadership of Trudeau.

Approval is irrelevant to the issue of if they did bad things.
The point is there is a problem when people continue to support leaders who work to undermine the rule of law.

 

[MrMatt]

It looks to me like the voters decided all the whining and complaints were irrelevant.

In the past 3 elections the Conservatives tried to win by throwing mud and every time they failed.

They need to come up with a better plan if they hope to avoid losing 4 elections in a row.

Absolutely. I completely agree.

That's WHY this is a problem.

 

[MrMatt]

He didn't try to overthrow the election process. He just tried to ignore election results and strip power from democratically elected representatives.

He didn't try to strip power.
He tried to get them to grant emergency powers for an extended period during a crisis. Yes it was a power grab, but it wasn't overthrowing parliment.

 

[MrMatt]

I think it's fair to call you a far right troll, when you're spinning up lies to disparage Canadian government, while drawing false equivalency to a far right fascist / authoritarian. The things you post are straight out of the right wing propaganda playbook. @MrMatt has, for a long time, been using the same strategy you use. You guys both sound like trained far right propagandists.

In any case, Trump is a fascist monster, who tried to overthrow the United States of America. Quite possibly the worst abuse of power the US has seen in modern times.

Nothing similar happened in Canada, despite the fantasies of far right nuts. We obviously have fair elections, and nobody in Canadian government tried to suppress or overthrow the election process (duh).

Oh please, "trained far right propagandist".

Sheesh, point out the bad behaviour of "dear leader", and suddenly you're "far right".
I don't even hold any particularly "far right" views, I just strongly disapprove of racist authoritarians.
Now I'm not calling Trudeau fascist, because he isn't, he's an anti-nationalist. I don't think the believes in Canada.
“first postnational state”. “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada.”


That's the problem, you smear people you disagree with, and start name calling.
That's what's wrong with political discussion, you can't debate issues, you just retreat to name calling.
The problem I have is you only see danger from a single direction, the "far right' is your all encompassing boogieman. That's a problem.
You fail to see that there are dangers all around us, and you're completely blind to the dangers from your political allies. As Trudeau stokes racism, and implements racist policies, his supporters deny that treating people differently because of their skin colour is even racist.

I agree we have pretty fair elections. The US has a HUGE problem here. Their elections have far too much political interference. Trumps behaviour in particular was egregious.
But it's over, the electoral college ( the only vote that truly matters wrt to the presidency) has voted.

While the obvious dangers are a risk, the real danger is the things that aren't as obvious.
What I see as the real danger is that people are unwilling to discuss the dangers that aren't publicly recognized.

 

[MrMatt]

As for Trudeau, he did try to grasp more power & was denied by govt. It operated properly. He is lame & IMHO needs to go. I think you’ll see him lose a confidence motion within the party and Mark Carney will be the new leader.... just my forecast..... shortly after this leadership swap, there will be yet another election.

I don't think Mark Carney would want the job, he can do pretty much anything he wants, why would he stoop to being a politician?
Many politicians and senior staffers use their former office and connections as their post political career.
Carney already has this level of access, I can imagine many in positions of influence who wouldn't return his calls.

Star Candidates don't necessarily play well in Canadian politics anyway.

If he wanted to get political, he could simply consult for the governments he's interested in.

 

[MrMatt]

Chrystia Freeland is the more likely choice to replace Trudeau.

The only question is when Trudeau decides to step down.

Yes, she is the logical choice, hopefuly she can repair some of the damage.

 

[MrMatt]

I am sorry, but that is incredibly naive.
Enabling Act of 1933 was temporary as well
Powers given to Ceasar in Roman empire was supposed to be temporary as well.
Putin has term limits.

Setting up authoritarian state even if the authoritarian claims it is temporary is dangerous as hell

Trudeaus power grab attempt(s) weren't as far reaching and were much more limited.


Honestly I think he's simply getting bored, and will likely move on anyway.

 

[MrMatt]

hfp75
Trump taught us all that the checks and balances are largely an illusion, Being able to ignore demands for his personal finances, taking steps to make his family richer, making the AG his personal pawn, loading the Supreme Court and many more...

We have not seen the end of it!

Well since there is no legal requirement to disclose personal finances under US law, he SHOULD be able to ignore those demands.

The ethics problem of enriching your family is clearly a problem that needs to be dealt with, same with the AG. We have very little legal protection for the PM overstepping their authority here.

As well the Supreme court, the PM appoints them, the US needs the senate to confirm them.
Canada, it's just the PM.

Actually the Supreme court "loading", there was a vacancy, Trump filled it, Senate confirmed it, the system worked as it should.
I'd like to point out that Trudeau also filled vacancies on the Supreme court with his appointee.

If you're going to pick on things that they did bad, you should pick better examples. Half of the examples you listed are literally the job of the President, or silly demands that are not legally required.

 

[MrMatt]

The main difference with Canada is that Trudeau is a lightweight by any measure. And his partner, the NDP loves spending other people's money more than him.

Yes, he's a lightweight, but that doesn't mean he isn't problematic.

 

[MrMatt]

If the goal is a functional government, then Canada has the best democratic system.

Trudeau is the leader of the Liberal government elected by the people. They have the mandate from the people to make all the decisions.

They literally don't.

The people elected a Liberal minority, which means that the people "want" another party to agree with what the Liberals propose. They very clearly said "we don't want you to have unchecked power".

 

[MrMatt]

De-centralized governments prioritize local issues, which works in a tiny country like Switzerland.

But such a political system would never work in a country as large and diverse as Canada.

Actually that's WHY we need decentralized government.
Most issues we face are local issues and they vary widely by region.

It makes no sense for some far away bureaucrat to make decisions on the day to day lives of the people.

This is why we actually contracted our government to give most of the power to the provinces, and only limited powers to the federal government.

 

[MrMatt]

Our government is fine as it is. I predict some big things coming soon.

That's what I'm afraid of.

They're already trying to kill the economy, stoke racism, and restrict speech.
I'm not sure how many more bad things we can expect?

 

[MrMatt]

I think people are failing to appreciate the threat to the US posed by Trump and the Republicans.

There is an ongoing process to install Trump loyalists throughout the government system (in states for now) and the Republicans have also now proven that they are committed to overthrowing a legitimate election.

This isn't going away. In the next US elections, there is a very good chance that the Republicans will try to illegally seize power and take over the USA. The Republicans are becoming an insurgency movement.

There's a good chance Trump will end up as dictator of the USA. Nothing like this has ever been seen in modern times.

I think you're overstating the threat of Trump.

The electoral college voted, nobody is suggesting any of their votes were illegitimate.
They could find a pile of ballots and see that Trump won 99.9% of the popular vote and that would still be irrelevant.

There is virtually no chance that Trump will end up as a dictator.
1 Presidential power is limited by the other branches.
2. It would require constitutional amendments, which just aren't going to happen.
3. He's really old.

Lots of stuff like this is seen all the time, around the world, nearly continuously for all of human history.

The real threats are the ones that aren't front page news.

 

[MrMatt]

This is a great illustration of conservative denial.

It's not conservative denial, to suggest it is is a smear attempt. Few people in general believe those silly claims.

You're coming up with wild fantasies about authoritarian rule in Canada (doesn't exist and not even on the table) while,

Trudeau made a power grab, it wasn't "authoritarian rule", just an overzealous power grab.

right in front of your eyes, Trump tried to force himself into power, as a non-elected dictator.

Not quite, he tried to squeeze the election to his favour, remember US elections are a mess, lots of politicians and courts skewed the rules and interpretations (and in some cases outright violated the intent if not the letter of the law) to get their results.
He just took it a bit further.

And he's still trying to. Right this very moment, assisted by other Republicans. They are working on it as we speak and continuing to say the last election was invalid.

That's a fantasy, please support that there is any work to undermine the votes of the electoral college, they were cast, they were certified. Here are the results.

2020 Electoral College Results

President Joseph R. Biden Jr. [D] Main Opponent Donald J. Trump [R] Electoral Vote Winner: 306 Main Opponent: 232 Total/Majority: 538/270 Vice President Kamala D. Harris [D] V.P. Opponent: Michael R.

www.archives.gov

I am honestly not aware of a single effort to reverse THE election.

If the election doesn't give them what they want, they will try to seize power using other means.

What other means?

 

[MrMatt]

The Republicans are not participating honestly in US elections. Now a long history of this. And it gives conservatism a bad name.

Republicans aren't Conservative any more than the Liberals are liberal.

 

[MrMatt]

Interesting that there is no response.
@james4beach
Are you going to show ANY evidence that they're actually trying to overturn the election?

I'm being completely serious, I don't know of a SINGLE legitimate attempt to overturn the election. Not one.
The election is over, all 538 votes were counted and certified.

 

[MrMatt]

You've got to either be trolling or completely disconnected from reality.

Trump intimidated several state officials to try changing the vote result. He directly bullied Georgia to change their results (it's on tape). He also tried to use the DOJ to change the election outcome.

Trump raised the idea of overturning the election result with White House counsel. In the meeting, Trump asked what measures they could use to install him into power. His lawyers told him it was an insanely bad idea. Thankfully the White House counsel did not cooperate with Trump's plans.

Many people in the DOJ quit and many more threatened to quit due to Trump and Republican pressure to weaponize the DOJ to overturn the election.

And still to this day, Trump is saying the election was fraudulent and other Republicans are also calling it a fraud.

So yeah MrMatt, there is tons of evidence that Trump and Republicans were actually trying to overturn the election. And these people are still working towards these efforts, which is why they are so dangerous. If Trump gets back into the White House, it's pretty obvious he will try the same thing, but this time with people who are more cooperative... and if he puts enough of his goons into the DOJ, he might not get the push-back that he did last time.

And then of course, Trump sent the violent MAGA group in a last ditch attempt to stop the election certification, with a physical assault on the Capitol.

Are you really oblivious to all of this?

Yeah, some of what they WERE doing was bad.

But they're not trying to overturn the election TODAY.
I asked if they're even trying, and you won't provide any references.

Everyone knows there was a lot of questionable activity during the election. But today, the election is final, it's done, and you haven't shown any evidence that anyone is trying to overturn it. That's my entire point. There are no apparent attempts to overturn the election today.