Liberal Meltdown in Canada (USA is catching on)

april04, 2005

[rasblue]

Don't forget the Desmaris connection to the Oil-for-Food scandal. Desmaris for those who don't know owns TotalFina which was the #1 customer of Sadaam back in the 1990's. Desmaris also owns Power Corp in Montreal who just happened to have every prime minister since Trudeau on its payroll at one point. Oh, Desmaris is also a major owner in BCE Enterprizes which owns the Globe and Mail and CTV Tv network. No help there.
Oh, and Desmaris' son is married to Jean Chretien's daughter.

[rasblue]

The Greater Toronto Area (6,500,000), and Metro Montreal (5,000,000) are over 1/3 of the whole country. Include the rest of urban Ontario (10,000,000 out of 12,000,000) and Quebec (6,000,000 out of 7,500,000) and you have over 1/2 of a 31,000,000 peasant nation.
For the record Downtown Vancouver is socialist but the suburbs are solid Conservative Party supporters.

[Stentor]

The federal inquiry into the scandal has "sensibly decided"

This appears to be the problem. Prior restraint is the "sensible" option.

[Ditter]

I am totally in the dark here. When you say "the Liberal" with a capital "L" what are you referring to?

[NZerFromHK]

To mimic Queen Victoria's saying, "What a misfortune!" (half humour, half true sadness when a country acts like this)

[NZerFromHK]

The Greater Toronto Area (6,500,000), and Metro Montreal (5,000,000) are over 1/3 of the whole country. Include the rest of urban Ontario (10,000,000 out of 12,000,000) and Quebec (6,000,000 out of 7,500,000) and you have over 1/2 of a 31,000,000 peasant nation. For the record Downtown Vancouver is socialist but the suburbs are solid Conservative Party supporters.

One of the lethalness of Canada is that the two largest cities (even after including suburbs) are both relatively left-leaning. Toronto is left-leaning by English-speaking world standards (many compare it to Melbourne in Australia) and yet the Lonely Planet travel guide calls it both politically and socially conservative. Montreal is informed by Franco-Belgium political discourse which makes it doubly leftist.

In contrast, there is no Quebec in Australia, and no Montreal. True, New South Wales and Victoria together have 50% of Australia's populations, but its Toronto equivalent, at least when politics is concerned, is Melbourne rather than Sydney. And in Australia Melbourne is maringally dwarfed by Sydney (3.5 million cf Sydney's 5 million). Sydney is no Toronto, it is politically moderate as Paddy McGuinness had remarked:

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There is a harder edge, a tougher minded approach to many issues in Sydney compared with Melbourne. There you tend to get more of the politics of the warm inner glow, along with pretensions to intellectual, cultural and moral superiority. Typically, the Fabian Society - wishy-washy socialism for idealistic and ineffectual intellectuals - flourishes there while it never did in Sydney.

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And in other states, Tasmania is the kookiest state but even thre the far-left (Greens and Democrats) could only get 18% of votes, vis-a-vis the votes from New Democrats alone in the whole of Canada - 18%. This perhaps explain the difference in political gravity between Canada and Australia.

[backhoe]

Here is a good link I've found to get up to speed on the scandal: http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/006611.php

[Squawk 8888]

One of the lethalness of Canada is that the two largest cities (even after including suburbs) are both relatively left-leaning.

Actually, in the Toronto area we have a mix of the loony left and "me first" yuppies in the city and mushy middle "don't take away my free health care" types out in the 'burbs. Most suburbanites here are socially conservative and loathe high taxes but scream blue murder if their government handouts are taken away. The problem in Canada isn't the left, it's the politicians who have made a science of buying off large groups of voters by looting from smaller, less influential groups.

[NZerFromHK]

I have witnessed that phenomenon from my relatives living in GTA - they are immigrants from Hong Kong. I don't know what has possessed them, but it seems other than lacking this edge of welfare self-reliance and muddling on economics, most are quite conservative (i.e. mainly social issues).

But the same could be said of Melbourne as well and most of the socialist Labor MPs come from Melbourne area rather than Sydney (who tended to supply moderate, old union types).