This guy is also my MP and is the least responsive rep I have ever had at any level of government (as someone who is quite devoted to talking to my representatives at all levels about all kinds of things), I have never heard a peep back from his office. I am glad he is stepping down, and I hope we get someone who has even a little bit of interest in doing their job.
I have a feeling Carney's legacy will be similar to Regan's. Popular during his time while simultaneously accelerating the country’s social and economic decline. I hope Canadians wake up to the Carney's bs asap!
That's pretty hard not to do.......given the speed with which he's approving projects like Carbon Capture, Nuclear (poor Port Hope, having to fight those toxins all over again) and small modular reactors in Darlington.....
......but the many good people too busy to fully pay attention need something well suited and soft talking to reassure them..........as they spend far too much time trying to eke out a living.
We're not in a good place just now, which ever way we turn.
when trudeau was first running i was in my early 20s, and remember an incredibly disappointing number of my peers saying confidently that we "hadn't had liberal leadership in our lifetime so why not give it a try?" i guess they forgot paul martin? i'm still sore about paul dewar losing his seat in that election (may he rest)
Who can forget Catherine McKenna's egregiously bad tenure as Liberal Min. of Environment? She shamelessly stood as the Liberal Party's primary oil pipeline shiller AS ENVIRONMENT MINISTER!
The liberals aren't going to save the environment. Or us. But I really don't see that anyone else will either. I suppose the NDP might possibly, but I am not sure. Look how the NDP treated Yves Engler and Bianca Mugenyi when they tried to run for the NDP leadership.
They may not have liked Engler's politics and I have to surmise that they kept Mugenyi out either because she is a black woman or because she is Engler's wife, or both. Not at all democratic. And the greens? Not a prayer as long as May is still the leader of that party. She is way too busy sucking up to power.
I cancelled my $50 a month pac over that undemocratic move......but since Avi won, with the votes he did, I'm suspecting they really feared the mood among the people might have been for an actual democratic socialist.
Much of what I now know about Canada's limp foreign policy I owe to Yves Engler........we should all read his little book, CANADA'S LONG WAR AGAINST DEMOCRACY....and get over our fantasies that we are somehow more 'progressive' than Amerikkka.....we're just more quietly underhanded is all.
I bailed on Trudeau after he bought TMX. His tortured rhetoric made it obvious that the best he could do for the environment was lip service. Carney has been an unpleasant surprise, as our climate policy is basically "Drill Baby Drill". While it is politically clever in terms of neutering Poilievre, it is going to play hell with our goal of a livable biosphere.
How can ANYONE be surprised that a Goldman Sachs investment banker, central banker, private equity exec would serve the interests of capital which sees the environment as a means to extract profit? Mind boggling!
I wonder if we'll see another Guilbeault cycle (activist goes Liberal then gets fed up after being made to swallow too much shit), but this time with a health activist. I'm thinking of Dr. Danielle Martin, whose tamer CN Tower climb equivalent was her 2014 testimony to the U.S. Congress. As a layperson, I thought her 2017 book, "Better Now", was pretty good, and in it she pulls no punches on the subject of health care privatization.
So far, the federal response to Alberta's plan to wreck Medicare has been ..... crickets. And not a peep out of the newly elected Danielle Martin MP.
That the Liberal party is the party of the establishment has been pretty clear for most of my lifetime.........but in Alberta, many are slow learners. Like the Democrats in the USA, our Liberals are the good cop to the Conservative bad cop, the white hats to the black hats......but as our own Linda McQuaig told us years ago............big donors and bigger corporations support both old line parties, and you can tell who's turn its going to be by the larger sums they allocate at any given point in our politics.
So sure. If you want change without change, climate solutions that don't slow down the emissions by more than a fraction of a fraction, they are your boys. Currently a group in Alberta fighting the Carbon Capture and Utilization boondoggle Carney is backing estimate that by 2030 that sop for the climate will capture 5% , at best, of the emissions our bitumen mining and fracking for fossil gas are going to emit.
And they will do it, thanks to Liberal largesse.......on our public dime. Our grandkids will curse us, at the snail's pace we are going.
I agree with the general message, but not on what feels too much like partisanship.
I believe that foreign Western European Liberalism, fixated on individualism, notions of property vs stewardship, Anthropocentrism, Androcentrism, etc should be the meaning we take for "Liberal" in this case.
While it is true that the LPC conforms to this, so does the NDP, Bloc, GPC, and even the historical Progressive Conservative party (or even further back, the Liberal-Conservative party).
It doesn’t feel serious to look at how the NDP have acted in provincial governments, and claim that they aren't also fixated on Western European Anthropocentric economic theories (Capitalism, Socialism, Marxism) that prioritize notions of capital/property over being in proper relationships with other-than-human life, land, water, etc.
It is easier to be in opposition (as a party or an individual) pointing away from oneself to other parties and individuals, than it is to look in the mirror at the core shared (foreign to this continent) worldviews and ideologies that cause the problems we are observing.
The premise of this take is that liberal democracy can fix the climate crisis. I think that liberal democracy can do more than the Liberals have done but I don't think it can fix it. That said, if all I wrote were my revolutionary ideas about how the entire system needs to be burned to the ground, almost no one would read me. "This needs to be burned to the ground" isn't actually a useful starting point for writing about current MPs, IMO.
(Was there an "is" vs "isn't" typo? Or am I misinterpreting which "this take" the first sentence referenced? Sorry -- English isn't always precise)
The premise of my take is that (Western European Liberalism style) liberal democracy can't fix the climate crisis (you can't fix a problem within the mindset that created it), and energy needs to be placed elsewhere than partisan politics.
I understand the need to mask-up to be heard by a mainstream Western audience, but I feel it is important to still recognize that this isn't an LPC vs NDP vs CPC vs GPC vs Bloc problem.
I also think it is useful to be aware of the loyalty to Liberalism of the institutions of Canada. Much of what I've seen discussing how the CBC and other Canadian institutions are pro-Liberal confuse that with the LPC when it is really about loyalty to Canadian institutional identity, values, etc.
Interesting comments here, many of which stray into : the Liberals are bad but so are the others. Which kinda sabotages change and in some way a better world. So when we screw up, when we support the wrong things and live and work with those that support greed, genocide and the destruction of our planet and our communities and livelihoods , can we change. Can we see our past follies and change course? In my humble self righteous outrageous opinion, I think we must.
This guy is also my MP and is the least responsive rep I have ever had at any level of government (as someone who is quite devoted to talking to my representatives at all levels about all kinds of things), I have never heard a peep back from his office. I am glad he is stepping down, and I hope we get someone who has even a little bit of interest in doing their job.
I have a feeling Carney's legacy will be similar to Regan's. Popular during his time while simultaneously accelerating the country’s social and economic decline. I hope Canadians wake up to the Carney's bs asap!
That's pretty hard not to do.......given the speed with which he's approving projects like Carbon Capture, Nuclear (poor Port Hope, having to fight those toxins all over again) and small modular reactors in Darlington.....
......but the many good people too busy to fully pay attention need something well suited and soft talking to reassure them..........as they spend far too much time trying to eke out a living.
We're not in a good place just now, which ever way we turn.
when trudeau was first running i was in my early 20s, and remember an incredibly disappointing number of my peers saying confidently that we "hadn't had liberal leadership in our lifetime so why not give it a try?" i guess they forgot paul martin? i'm still sore about paul dewar losing his seat in that election (may he rest)
Who can forget Catherine McKenna's egregiously bad tenure as Liberal Min. of Environment? She shamelessly stood as the Liberal Party's primary oil pipeline shiller AS ENVIRONMENT MINISTER!
Then retired to a plum post as a UN green washing advisor! She would know!
The liberals aren't going to save the environment. Or us. But I really don't see that anyone else will either. I suppose the NDP might possibly, but I am not sure. Look how the NDP treated Yves Engler and Bianca Mugenyi when they tried to run for the NDP leadership.
They may not have liked Engler's politics and I have to surmise that they kept Mugenyi out either because she is a black woman or because she is Engler's wife, or both. Not at all democratic. And the greens? Not a prayer as long as May is still the leader of that party. She is way too busy sucking up to power.
I cancelled my $50 a month pac over that undemocratic move......but since Avi won, with the votes he did, I'm suspecting they really feared the mood among the people might have been for an actual democratic socialist.
Much of what I now know about Canada's limp foreign policy I owe to Yves Engler........we should all read his little book, CANADA'S LONG WAR AGAINST DEMOCRACY....and get over our fantasies that we are somehow more 'progressive' than Amerikkka.....we're just more quietly underhanded is all.
I bailed on Trudeau after he bought TMX. His tortured rhetoric made it obvious that the best he could do for the environment was lip service. Carney has been an unpleasant surprise, as our climate policy is basically "Drill Baby Drill". While it is politically clever in terms of neutering Poilievre, it is going to play hell with our goal of a livable biosphere.
How can ANYONE be surprised that a Goldman Sachs investment banker, central banker, private equity exec would serve the interests of capital which sees the environment as a means to extract profit? Mind boggling!
I wonder if we'll see another Guilbeault cycle (activist goes Liberal then gets fed up after being made to swallow too much shit), but this time with a health activist. I'm thinking of Dr. Danielle Martin, whose tamer CN Tower climb equivalent was her 2014 testimony to the U.S. Congress. As a layperson, I thought her 2017 book, "Better Now", was pretty good, and in it she pulls no punches on the subject of health care privatization.
So far, the federal response to Alberta's plan to wreck Medicare has been ..... crickets. And not a peep out of the newly elected Danielle Martin MP.
That the Liberal party is the party of the establishment has been pretty clear for most of my lifetime.........but in Alberta, many are slow learners. Like the Democrats in the USA, our Liberals are the good cop to the Conservative bad cop, the white hats to the black hats......but as our own Linda McQuaig told us years ago............big donors and bigger corporations support both old line parties, and you can tell who's turn its going to be by the larger sums they allocate at any given point in our politics.
So sure. If you want change without change, climate solutions that don't slow down the emissions by more than a fraction of a fraction, they are your boys. Currently a group in Alberta fighting the Carbon Capture and Utilization boondoggle Carney is backing estimate that by 2030 that sop for the climate will capture 5% , at best, of the emissions our bitumen mining and fracking for fossil gas are going to emit.
And they will do it, thanks to Liberal largesse.......on our public dime. Our grandkids will curse us, at the snail's pace we are going.
I agree with the general message, but not on what feels too much like partisanship.
I believe that foreign Western European Liberalism, fixated on individualism, notions of property vs stewardship, Anthropocentrism, Androcentrism, etc should be the meaning we take for "Liberal" in this case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberalism
While it is true that the LPC conforms to this, so does the NDP, Bloc, GPC, and even the historical Progressive Conservative party (or even further back, the Liberal-Conservative party).
https://r.flora.ca/p/western-european-overton-window
It doesn’t feel serious to look at how the NDP have acted in provincial governments, and claim that they aren't also fixated on Western European Anthropocentric economic theories (Capitalism, Socialism, Marxism) that prioritize notions of capital/property over being in proper relationships with other-than-human life, land, water, etc.
It is easier to be in opposition (as a party or an individual) pointing away from oneself to other parties and individuals, than it is to look in the mirror at the core shared (foreign to this continent) worldviews and ideologies that cause the problems we are observing.
The premise of this take is that liberal democracy can fix the climate crisis. I think that liberal democracy can do more than the Liberals have done but I don't think it can fix it. That said, if all I wrote were my revolutionary ideas about how the entire system needs to be burned to the ground, almost no one would read me. "This needs to be burned to the ground" isn't actually a useful starting point for writing about current MPs, IMO.
(Was there an "is" vs "isn't" typo? Or am I misinterpreting which "this take" the first sentence referenced? Sorry -- English isn't always precise)
The premise of my take is that (Western European Liberalism style) liberal democracy can't fix the climate crisis (you can't fix a problem within the mindset that created it), and energy needs to be placed elsewhere than partisan politics.
I understand the need to mask-up to be heard by a mainstream Western audience, but I feel it is important to still recognize that this isn't an LPC vs NDP vs CPC vs GPC vs Bloc problem.
I also think it is useful to be aware of the loyalty to Liberalism of the institutions of Canada. Much of what I've seen discussing how the CBC and other Canadian institutions are pro-Liberal confuse that with the LPC when it is really about loyalty to Canadian institutional identity, values, etc.
https://r.flora.ca/p/canadian-heritage
Interesting comments here, many of which stray into : the Liberals are bad but so are the others. Which kinda sabotages change and in some way a better world. So when we screw up, when we support the wrong things and live and work with those that support greed, genocide and the destruction of our planet and our communities and livelihoods , can we change. Can we see our past follies and change course? In my humble self righteous outrageous opinion, I think we must.
Insert career-climbing joke here... also, the lesson Nora draws is exactly right.
FYI, Guilbeault could not have defeated Hélène Laverdière in Laurier–Ste-Marie in the 2019 general election, as Laverdière declined to run that time.
Thanks! I forgot that Nima had run in that election! I've updated it ... it's an even bigger crime that he kept Nima out of the House of Commons.
Six years later, see if you can spot the error in this article about the election from Global News: https://globalnews.ca/news/5796292/canada-election-laurier-sainte-marie/