The Winter Up There Must Give People Brain Freeze

[Mongrel]

Federal tories to vote on anti-trans, anti-"woke", policies and similar measures at upcoming convention

Just in case Canadians had any doubts.

For the record, constitutional protections for medical care in the face of political interference are extremely robust in Canada - we still have no politically-imposed limits on abortion thanks to Dr. Morganthaler - but as that same record shows, local or provincial governments can sometimes interfere by underservicing treatments and limiting access to something they're legally supposed to provide. Then again, recent cases also establish that this too could be litigated against - but they never should've had to be.

Point being there's some pretty hard limits on how much damage they could do, but it's still bad and any amount of damage is still damage done and hatred stoked.

[Büge]

Federal tories to vote on anti-trans, anti-"woke", policies and similar measures at upcoming convention

paywall'd

[Mongrel]

Federal tories to vote on anti-trans, anti-"woke", policies and similar measures at upcoming convention

paywall'd

Text:

Federal Conservatives are gathering in Quebec City this week for a policy convention that observers say presents as much political peril as opportunity.

The convention, which starts Thursday in a province where the Tories have often sought to make gains, comes as polls indicate the party has been gaining support, with leader Pierre Poilievre regularly attacking the government on affordability issues.

Still, the challenge will be to present a compelling image to both Quebeckers and the rest of Canada, all while managing fractious policy business that could undermine those gains in popularity.

“With the Conservatives, there are a lot of different constituencies within the party, and some of them are not in sync with the average voter,” said Daniel Béland, a political scientist at McGill University in Montreal, in an interview.

“They have to have an open debate about the issues that members care about, but at the same time I think it’s important for them to frame the party, during these three days, as a party where the focus is really on the economy,” said Prof. Béland, who is also the director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada.

The gathering will feature voting on policy proposals such as committing a Conservative government to “protect children” by prohibiting “life-altering” interventions on minors to treat gender dysphoria.

Delegates will also consider a proposal that says women are entitled to the safety, dignity and privacy of single-sex spaces and “women-only” categories in sports, awards, grants and scholarships.

They will also be presented with a “protecting workers” proposal that says the party does not support “forced political, cultural or ideological training of any kind as a precondition of employment or practice.”

Also on the convention agenda is a speech by Daniel Hannan, a member of the British House of Lords who campaigned for Brexit.

Writing in Britain’s Sunday Telegraph in July of last year, he praised Mr. Poilievre, who was then seeking the party leadership. “With his popularity, honesty and economic good sense, Canada’s Pierre Poilievre is exactly what Britain needs,” he wrote. “There’s a hint of geek chic about him. ‘Here,’ you say to yourself, ‘is a clever young person in glasses who understands economics.’ Not a bad look at the present.”

Quebecker Rudy Husny, a political analyst and former federal Conservative adviser, said Canadians are more and more interested in Mr. Poilievre, so he needs to use this week to highlight his messages on affordability and housing.

Mr. Husny said conventions are a “risky exercise” but an important opportunity for new leaders to gather the troops and boost morale.

“You have to proceed with caution,” he said in an interview. “I think that everything is geared for a good convention, but anything can happen in a convention.”

In 2021, then-leader Erin O’Toole was forced into endless explanations after delegates at a convention voted against expanding party policy on climate change to include the line “We recognize that climate change is real.”

Prof. Béland said a successful event in Quebec City could impress Quebeckers and other Canadians alike.

“So I think it’s important for them that they put on a good show without any mistakes, because things are going well in the polls,” he said.

There are 78 federal seats in Quebec. The Liberals have 35, and the Bloc Québécois has 32. The Conservatives have nine, down from the 10 they won in the 2021 election. There is one Independent and one New Democrat.

Pollster Nik Nanos said a Quebec-based convention sends a signal that the Conservatives are interested in the province, but the party needs to advance policies that are appealing to Quebeckers.

He said one key issue is climate change. “Concern about the environment is clearly the top issue of concern in the province and the highest in Canada. Going into Quebec and not speaking to the environment would be a political risk for Poilievre,” Mr. Nanos said in a statement.

Both Andrew Scheer and Erin O’Toole, two previous leaders of the federal Tories, were bullish about gains in Quebec, with Mr. O’Toole expressing hopes of winning 30 seats there in 2021. Both ended up winning just 10, largely in the area where the convention is being held.

[Mongrel]

The Tories voted yes to every one of those proposals, including anti-vaccine ones as well, with roughly 70% delegate support.

QUEL SURPRISE

[Mongrel]

Canadian authorities claim that India is directly responsible for the recent assassination of a Canadian Sikh citizen on Canadian soil

They may also be behind three more Sikh separatist assassinations - another on Canadian soil, one in the UK, and one in India.

Well this is gonna get real fuckin awkward.

[Crick]

I must have a really off image of India, because I would have never imagined they'd do something like this, let alone in someplace like Canada.

[Mongrel]

I must have a really off image of India, because I would have never imagined they'd do something like this, let alone in someplace like Canada.

No, this seems weird to everyone. I looked at the Indian news as much as I could and it doesn't seem like there's any real outrage about this, because they have indeed been mad at Canada acting as a safe haven for Sikh separatists, but like, this is way farther than a given casual observer would have thought they'd go. Maybe Indians are less surprised, I don't know. Even Jagmeet Singh seems caught off guard by this, talking about how the Sikh community in India was used to extrajudicial violence from the Indian government and Hindu majority, but that this is basically unprecedented wild west shit.

Also reading between the lines, it seems like Trudeau going public with this was a sort of last resort, as several high level ministers and public servants and then Trudeau himself held high-level talks with Modi and his staff over the past month, which went nowhere I guess.

[Cait]

Modi's government has been pretty actively censoring news in and out of India for a while now, particularly regarding 'undesirables' like Sikh.

[nosimpleway]

The idea of Sikh being undesirable is utterly baffling to me. Have you ever met a Sikh? They're legit some of the nicest, most genuine people you'll ever meet.

Painting Sikh as undesirable is like hating soup. Or teddy bears. Or Silversong.

[Mongrel]

India has progressively been getting more racist (institutionally) and authoritarian under Modi, so it's not a surprise they would be extremely hostile to ethnic separatist movements.

This is still outrageous and bewildering though. Like, the comparison for Modi is Erdogan or Duda, not Putin or Xi, or even Orban (well maybe Orban).

I mean, shit, we're basically crawling with Chinese agents up here (it's a pretty severe problem, electoral interference and the whole bit) and they give absolutely zero fucks about Canadian sovereignty (they opened blatantly illegal BRANCH POLICE STATIONS here FFS), yet even they would blink at an assassination like this. Luring or intimidating Chinese-Canadians into going abroad to a place they can kidnap them and take them back to China for a show trial? Sure, the Chinese have done that. But just running up to a dude and gunning him down in broad daylight, hell no, even China doesn't go there. The only comparison is Russia or North Korea, and even they limited their blatant assassinations to people who'd been directly involved with the government (i.e. ex-spies like Skripal, or oligarchs, or the Other Heir in NK's case), not semi-random ethnic community leaders. This is just crazy shit.

[Crick]

Forgive me, I know this is off topic, but are any Canadians here familiar with the Red Green Show? It was a whole thing as a import here in Midwest when I was a kid, but I've always wondered about its significance in Canada itself. Was it a kid's thing? A regional thing?

[Mongrel]

It absolutely was a thing, and kind of still is for those who Remember.

[Mongrel]

So Zelenskyy visited recently, after the stop at the US last week. The Speaker of the House knew of an old Ukrainian vet from WWII from his riding who had fought against the Russians, and decided on his own initiative what a great surprise it would be if he invited him to the House during the visit without mentioning this to anyone else beforehand. Presented as an, erm, veteran, the 98-year old got two standing ovations, from everyone - and I do mean everyone - in the house, including Zelenskyy and Trudeau of course.

I bet you already knew where this was going as soon as I said "Russians" and yes, of course it turns out that he wasn't just a nationalist, or even "just" a capital-N Nazi, he was specifically a Waffen SS grenadier from a notorious unit that Zelenskyy has publicly condemned every time the surviving members have popped up (brief reminder that Zelenskyy's anger is not for show - the SS murdered his great-grandfather and all three of his great-uncles).

Good job everyone. This is why you do your fucking homework.

EDIT:

Ever notice how most of the news posted in this thread is about some incredibly stupid unforced error on Canada's part? I mean the thread title really is accurate, I feel. We really are dumb like that. Not in like this spiteful malicious way (I guess that's... something), but this really clueless-yet-condescending ignorance of a guy who insists he totally knows what he's doing.

[Friday]

Oops we accidentally gave an actual literal Waffen SS two standing ovations,

love and kisses,

the Canadian government

(man, I just got done writing a big long post about how real life is far more absurd than fiction because it's not bound by "realism" like fiction is, and then I come here and read this.)

[Mongrel]

Like it's not even abstract in the sense that this guy was an SS guy and the SS burned down houses with members of Zelenskyy's family inside, it's not impossible that this guy was one of those actual specific SS guys and I cannot imagine how Zelenskyy felt on hearing about this.

Oh and Sunday was also Yom Kippur.

[Mongrel]

Learned an awful yet fascinating tidbit of history through this though.

In the late 40's, the British still held many former Eastern European SS men captive in camps in Italy (Including the 14th Waffen SS Division Galicia, the unit the Nazi who got the recent ovation was from), wondering what to do with them, with one report stating "what little we know of their record is bad." The British home office were hoping to dump them somewhere, anywhere, with a later file stating "We're still hoping to get rid of the less desirable Ukrainian POWs either to Germany or Canada".

I think I've mentioned it before, but just in case: Canada has the world's largest Ukrainian diaspora and has since the second half of the 19th century, when they were specifically encouraged to come and settle on all that nice prairie land which had been seized by by government from Indigenous and Metis groups in the decade or two before (later waves went to the cities like everyone else). This is also why at times half the NHL has been Canadian guys whose last names end in -chuk.

So of course in the wake of WWII there was one of the big periodic immigration drives to bring Ukrainians to Canada, with a heavy refugee component as many fled the Soviets. However, it was in fact fully illegal at the time for anyone who had served in the German Armed forces in WWII at all, let alone the SS to immigrate to Canada. Well one of the main Ukrainian Canadians running resettlement and refugee processing was an RCAF officer, Flight Lt. Bohdan Panchuk, who figured, hey, what else to do but lie your ever-loving ass off? So he told the government these Nazis been conscripted at gunpoint, while also massaging the ever-loving fuck out of their records. Meanwhile the British, eager to dump theses guys literally anywhere they'd been taken, happily went along with the snowjob.

While some in the Canadian government didn’t probe deeply into the background of the Ukrainian “refugees,” British government bureaucrats knew who they were dealing with and were more than happy to dump the SS troops into Canada’s lap. “The Division was an SS division and technically all of its officers and senior NCOs are liable for trial as war criminals,” noted a report from Britain’s Under-Secretary of State.

Many Ukrainians who already lived here or were in the process of immigrating actually knew exactly who these guys were and tried to protest the decision, writing to any government official who'd listen, but their warnings were ignored.

To this day, it's unclear what in the fuck Panchuk was in fact thinking. There's no record of him participating in Nazi activities otherwise and he also confided to other resettlement officials that "God forbid any of these parasitic bandits ever come here". It could be the British lied to him as well about some of the worst of the worst, or who exactly they were sending. It was also known that Panchuk was a very strong believer in the rights of refugees to flee persecution and may have incorrectly rationalized that he would have to accept the bad with the good to uphold this principle (remember a lot of modern refugee law was being laid down right after WWII). But those are not a defence - it was still a disgraceful decision. And of course the British just British'd everyone as usual (I'd have called them British shitbags, but that would be a tautology, wouldn't it?).

Regardless, the Canadian government of the day could have and should have - and were in fact legally obligated to! - say no, but as usual, well, no one could be bothered to actually check anything or do their jobs, so instead we may have ended up with as many as 2000 SS men.

[Büge]

we're just too polite

[Mongrel]

Okay, I know Canada is full of fuck-ups, but India trying to distract from the murder allegations by claiming Trudeau's plane couldn't take off from the recent G20 meeting* because it was full of cocaine is too funny. I mean, even if Trudeau really was somehow high on coke 24/7, this excuse is what doesn't fly.

Like, no, we're just cheap motherfuckers who couldn't be bothered to replace government property for fear of taxpayer outrage. We're literally letting the Prime Minister's residence collapse from neglect (Trudeau has never lived there and likely never will) because everyone's too afraid to pay for it. Imagine Americans not repairing the White House for 75 years. Shit, that's NOTHING compared to the legendary 50-year Canadian epic about The Sea Kings**.

But even so.

"We're saying you murdered a Canadian Citizen on Canadian soil, would you care to comment?"
"Yeah we would! Uh... we, uh..."



"Your Prime Minister's a cokehead!"

YOU GUYS. YOU GUYS, SERIOUSLY.

*It was broken - the planes are old and due to be replaced at the end of the year. There was a whole saga about a guy flying a replacement part in from Canada.

**Maybe the goofiest military procurement debacle of the 20th century, not just in Canada, but the entire western world.

[KingRoyal]

Okay, I know Canada is full of fuck-ups, but India trying to distract from the murder allegations by claiming Trudeau's plane couldn't take off from the recent G20 meeting* because it was full of cocaine is too funny. I mean, even if Trudeau really was somehow high on coke 24/7, this excuse is what doesn't fly.

No it was the plane that couldn't fly

[nosimpleway]

Fuck yeah, Sea Kings