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Quite a few accounts who have been here for many years have been breaking the guidelines rather shamefully in this thread. That's dismaying. If established users can't set a good example for others, what chance does this community have? If Hacker News is interesting enough to keep coming back to for years, you owe it to your fellow members not to contribute to destroying it.
Patio11 has some good coverage of Trudeau's handling of the trucker protest against the government's handling of COVID-19 [1].
Whatever you think of the truckers' position or protest tactics, any punishment for their actions ought to go through the laws and court system. Trudeau instead essentially told the banking system "You can't do business with those people, they're terrorists." Patio11's words of what happened next:
"The assistant deputy finance minister...said...'The intent was not to get at the families', and when a democratic government starts a sentence that way something deeply #*&$#ed up has happened."
I'm not on the pulse of Canadian politics, so I don't really know what sins or political circumstances have led Trudeau to this point, or if he has any redeeming qualities. Personally, I'm glad to see him gone.
And the court of law later determined that this was an abuse of power and unlawful. The fact that there is an existing law that can be abused does not negate the argument that abusing it is unlawful.
I think it’s worth noting that the weekend before this, local residents of Ottawa had basically “stormed” one of the trucker convoy camps to unblock a road. There were genuine concerns that the residents of Ottawa were ready to take matters into their own hands, and it would be a bloodbath. Not to mention the blockade in Alberta where they were found with guns and a pipe bomb, with their communications indicating they were planning to murder the RCMP officers on site!
Declaring the Emergency acts was overwhelmingly popular in Canada and remains one of the most popular things Trudeau ever did. The moves to restrict access to banking affected less than 20 people (and I think they were generally funnelling money from international propaganda groups or committing similar financial crimes).
I was a resident of downtown Ottawa during this period. It was bad. We had a young kid and didn't feel even safe walking her to a park, because the route crossed over convoy lines and there were all sorts of stories of harassment and assaults. We didn't even experience the worst of it; lots of people dealt with truck horns blaring 24/7, but at least our street at least was kept clear as an emergency route.
We put up with the occupation for about two weeks, but we saw a steady escalation and decided to leave town. We stayed with family for two weeks until the convoy was cleared.
I'm very proud of the residents who were brave enough to put up a resistance (the so-called "Battle of Billings Bridge"), and I'm appalled by the response by the local police and the province. I absolutely believe the federal government made the correct choice, and this was proven out in the public hearing after the fact on the use of the Emergency Act.
I live in Ottawa. We were failed by all levels of government, our police services, and our intelligence services.
The convoy drove across the country, broadcasting their intentions on social media. Yet, everyone acted shocked when they did exactly what they said they were going to do.
I hesitate to call them protesters because I don't think they had a permit or a cohesive message beside F* Trudeau, but they were completely disrespectful to other citizens, and I could never defend their actions. However, irrespective of how unpopular their actions were, the courts have deemed the federal government's response unreasonable and unconstitutional, and I agree with that assessment.
The government could have dealt with this earlier and more directly, but whatever passes for "leadership" these days in Canada has proven itself completely inept.
Personally, I would like to see an inquiry into foreign interference in our elections, but I guess that’s not considered a pressing issue anymore.
I don’t know why they couldn’t do the friggen obvious move of asking the police to unblock the roads by force, and impounding the vehicles for repeat offences. Going after bank accounts was a coward move that never made sense. If I just sat down in the middle of a subway tunnel, I would be removed by force immediately, no matter what I was protesting. They created problems for themselves by not doing the obvious solution.
Blocking a road is a fire hazard and should never have been tolerated by local police for that reason alone. You cannot impede transit in a city.
It takes half a day to get the details over with a judge and decide exactly whose and what accounts to lock, those truckers were allowed to stay there for months. (And if you don't know what exactly to block, you shouldn't be allowed to block anything. Maybe you still have enough reason to look at their movement, maybe not.)
Also, it takes a couple of hours to get the police to unblock a road. Last time I checked, money movement in bank accounts does not block roads.
So the threat of violence against a non violent protest resulted in the non violent protestors being labeled terrorist and justified all the action that followed?
It's absolutely astounding that there have not been harsher consequences for the police who abandoned their duty in Ottawa. Where is the of rule of law here?
Crazy how only Canada has used emergency powers to curtail opposition. In fact it did that twice in 50 years.
And only twenty people getting their rights completely stripped because they bothered the federal government workers in Ottawa is good enough according to you?
Maybe it's just because I'm part of a minority but your entire comment is exactly the issue with Canadian politics. We basically have 0 rights the moment a majority decides that we don't. I guess that's the perks of having an incredibly ineffective constitution.
The federal response was largely due to the abject failure of the city & provincial governments to enforce their laws. The city and province had plenty of tools to get rid of the protesters: noise bylaws, parking bylaws, et cetera. They failed completely, so the Federal government was forced to intervene. The federal government did not have nuanced tools to deal with the truckers so used the blunt hammers they did have.
That's basically what happened. Between the three police forces, the jurisdiction was unclear. Parliamentary police and city police could not decide which laws to enforce as it depended on where the protestors were located. The province mostly polices highways and small townships that cannot afford their own police force. They quickly regained control of the highways to divert any additional incoming trucks but couldn't step in within city limits for trucks that were already there.
YSK that the people who had their accounts frozen weren't simply protesting in Ottawa; they were blocking international borders to our largest trading partner, effectively holding our economy hostage. This absolutely constitutes behavior that's a danger to our nation so it makes sense to freeze the accounts of the people doing it. To be clear, there were many attempts to settle this without freezing people's bank accounts, but when nothing else works sometimes you have to get out the big guns.
That logic seems like it would outlaw labor strikes too, especially in important industries. Sometimes, holding the economy hostage is the point.
I take exception to the framing of “attempts to settle this.” The government used violence and threat of violence to make the problem go away. There wasn’t an attempt at compromise. Do what I say or else isn’t an attempt to settle.
Out of curiosity, how do you feel about labor strikes? If customs, border control, longshoremen, or some other union decided to strike and picket would you support having the feds declare them terrorists and doing the banking thing?
This is what a protest is. (French here). If protesters go as far, and in Canada it was because you did them dirty, then you must sit at a table and negotiate. You must sit at a table and negotiate with everyone in a country. You cannot do someone dirty then complain that they protest.
It’s effects removing the right to protest, and therefore, removing democracy itself. Go live in Singapore?
Stop Oil glue themselves to the road in cities as a protest, disrupting the economic output of major cities. They haven't been treated like a terrorist organisation.
>but when nothing else works sometimes you have to get out the big guns.
Isn't that why you have the police, army, etc? You use force to remove those people breaking the laws, not go after their families. That's some USSR shit.
> I'm not on the pulse of Canadian politics, so I don't really know what sins or political circumstances have led Trudeau to this point, or if he has any redeeming qualities. Personally, I'm glad to see him gone.
This seems like a pretty big conclusion to reach based on one article and one topic, no? Especially when you, in the same sentence, also recognize that you don't follow Canadian politics?
Debanking someone in our current society is the most abusive things they could have done. It prevented people from accessing and using their own money in an era that is almost cashless. It effectively starved people out and left them trapped. It is so excessively overboard, yet there are those here who will defend it because it happened to those not on their side. When the government changes and it is used against them they will shout and holler with surprise. I'll never understand how people don't see how something that you allow the government to do to others will eventually be used against you too. It's only happened every goddamn time throughout history.
> Offtopic to politics, but browsers these days support arbitrary text anchors.
Find this extremely annoying, especially in search results: I want to start at the beginning of the article/post, and not some random place in the middle—which is where the highlighted snippet in the search results are from, but not helpful for learning the larger context.
It also tends to mess up URLS that you may want to copy-paste as it has that text parameter garbage at the end (often with a sizeable amount of text that needs to be removed).
I don’t follow Canadian politics, and I don’t know that much about Trudeau, but having the capital full of honking, mad truckers, holding the government hostage for their demands to be met in a time of crisis sounds like an absolute nightmare.
There had already been one standoff between local residents and truckers, I remember there being chatter that the next weekend groups were going to coordinate in their neighborhoods and drive out the convoy on their own (using baseball bats, cast iron skillets, or golf clubs if need be). The situation had the potential to turn into an absolute blood bath.
Do we think it might be a little intellectually dishonest to equate a peaceful political protest with an armed hostage-taker?
I think this is important regardless of whether you believe in their specific target of protest or not. The right to peacefully protest is very very important, and your feelings on a specific protest should be wholly divorced from the importance of preserving the right to protest in general.
Nobody was held hostage. People unhappy with their rulers took peacefully to the streets and made noise and peacefully and temporarily interfered with some business activity.
This is the furthest thing from “holding the government hostage”. It’s the adversarial relationship between the populace and the state working exactly as intended and designed.
>'The intent was not to get at the families', and when a democratic government starts a sentence that way something deeply #&$#ed up has happened."
Wait, are people that shocked that their democratic governments are wiling to act like mobsters/dictators against a minority group just to get their way and appease a majority, when the history books are full of such examples? People must have a short memory then and why history repeating itself is a fact.
How bad were the covid restrictions in Canada that the truckers were complaining about in 2022? By 2022 most of the world had gone back to normal business-as-usual. Why were they even protesting? As an outsider looking in, it seemed like a mix of ignorance, propaganda, and stupidity made them do it.
> The government(s) went way overboard with Pfizer proof of purchase QR codes to get lunch. Especially when uptake was 80%+
> They also went overboard by locking down again over the holidays when everyone was already catching the most contagious Omicron. People not being able to go to a gym to stay fit, that already needed a barcode, swayed a lot of the public that things were going on too long.
> But the obnoxiousness of the truckers also went too far for too long. The news of rifles and arrests in Alberta was (obviously) too far.
> I don't have a citation on hand, but at one point more than a third of Canadians did support either the truckers explicitly or their aims, and that's a higher percentage than voted for the current governing party. Support was higher among younger people, sometimes over 50%. But this percentage decreased as time went on.
> The government also completely failed to act diplomatically or to de-escalate the situation. Instead we had inflammatory rhetoric and a focus on some silly flags (which should be condemned, but a lot of people have doubts as to their sincerity, and I've seen some pretty gross signs against the unvaxxed too)
> Some people, even in this comment section, take their rhetoric and opposition too far.
> There is no doubt in my mind that the more time passes, the more we will look at Canada's response to the pandemic (especially in its later years) as a horrendous failure that harmed trust in public health, harmed social cohesion, and harmed our democratic and civil institutions. Everyone failed and everyone suffered as a result.
You mentioned specifically restrictions on lunch. Do you just mean that there are more office workers eating lunch because it is during the day? Or were the vaccine passport rules different depending on what meal or time of day?
I guess what I'm not getting here is this: the rage about the "everyone that went too far" doesn't seem to have extended to the people who actually did that. By which I mean our provincial governments, with their ad hoc dubious and last minute irrational responses. Specifically, Doug Ford who seems to have suffered not a bit in terms of support but enacted the most draconian of COVID restrictions and lockdowns, all at the last minute and after numbers were skyrocketing, not before...
Meanwhile Trudeau did what... airports and borders. The feds influence here was not high. ArriveCAN was a debacle, obviously. But the trucker thing was US initiated.
I don't think there's anything the feds could have done to head this off. They couldn't make the trucker vax thing not happen, not with Biden insisting on it. They had no control over what was happening in workplaces and schools across the country. Their biggest fault, I think, was being weak -- which the opposition took advantage of to create mayhem and try to bring the govt down.
That the people organizing the protest were in part former oil industry lobbyists and had previously been involved in climate change denying anti-carbon tax protests should also make one pause about what the motivations might be and where the money might be coming from, as well?
Regardless, I think we agree: by January with Omicron showing that it would transmit like crazy regardless of vaccine, mandates everywhere should have been dropped.
People on hn seem weirdly obsessed with trudeau's handling of the trucker protest. Regardless of what you think of it, at this point it is very old news and trudeau's actions were controversial but largely popular.
The handling of the trucker protest is not why he resigned. It is not why he is unpopular.
I’ve noticed a ton of non-Canadians like to reference this event as if it’s some incredible example of government tyranny gone too far. Nearly anyone who lived in Ottawa during this time (like me) would say the police completely failed the city, and the “protests” went on for literal weeks too long due to inaction and incompetence by all levels of government.
I live and work with mostly conservatives and none of them supported the truckers nor do they even mention it. Their grievances are more typical - inflation, taxes, and immigration.
I think we need to be careful when reading these opinions to not mix up Americans’ views, Russian trolls with legitimate Canadian discourse.
Hacker News is pretty much far right when it comes to politics. Heck the moderators refused to allow any criticism of the monarchy when the queen died but allowed it when Jimmy Carter died.
While I agree with patio11's assessment here, if you were to poll the average Ottawan about the trucker protest, you'll largely get back a response of "#&$! those people", soley because they were minorly-inconvenienced by them.
Canadian politics (not uniquely here) is plagued with petty squabbles. The really meaningful political and social issues don't get any airtime.
> if you were to poll the average Ottawan about the trucker protest, you'll largely get back a response of "#&$! those people", soley because they were minorly-inconvenienced by them
This just illustrates why pure/Athenian democracy doesn’t work. Madness of the crowds and all that. Decide most issues by plebescite and you get an emotional outcome.
> soley because they were minorly-inconvenienced by them
The trucker protests were right in the middle of the Covid supply chain issues. Not defending the actions taken in particular, but it had the potential to be a much worse issue than a minor inconvenience.
Is this where the meme about Canadians being very polite comes from - a tendency towards pettiness rather than really nasty political rifts? (I don't know anything about Canadian culture)
> Whatever you think of the truckers' position or protest tactics, any punishment for their actions ought to go through the laws and court system.
Your personal opinion seems to be completely uninformed or misinformed, by the way you tried to frame it as something done to truckers instead of what it actually was: lifting a blockade.
It's even more baffling when taken into account the alleged motivation: COVID-19 restrictions.
> I'm not on the pulse of Canadian politics, (...)
> I don't really know what sins or political circumstances have led Trudeau to this point
> Personally, I'm glad to see him gone
Why do people do this? You don't keep up with Canadian politics and you don't know what led Trudeau to this point, yet you're glad he's gone? Is it not OK anymore to just not have opinions either way, and people have to take a stance on everything?
"I'm not on the pulse of Canadian politics, so I don't really know what sins or political circumstances have led Trudeau to this point, or if he has any redeeming qualities. Personally, I'm glad to see him gone."
As somebody who lived in Ottawa at the time, this was not good coverage. Neither was DHH's. It was incredibly rage-inducing to read in real time as it was happening too. My takeaway from this is that one should minimize the confidence in one's opinion of foreign events.
> I'm not on the pulse of Canadian politics, so I don't really know what sins or political circumstances have led Trudeau to this point, or if he has any redeeming qualities. Personally, I'm glad to see him gone.
Uh really? Is this another version of “Both sides” claiming you don’t know the pulse whilst amplifying a more right leaning, niche, view?
Niche view? Nobody likes Trudeau, not even is own party that is why they are pressuring him to step down. The comment you are commenting on might not be well thought out or in depth but it is how MANY average Canadians feel.
Is it me or does it seem like the internet era has taken away incumbent advantage and actually put incumbents at a massive disadvantage? I'm not here to attack or defend what Trudeau has actually done, only to posit the idea that once you become a leader in the political landscape there is a very effective machine whose only job is to attack you, personally, as much as possible anywhere you're perceived to be vulnerable. If you've followed US politics for the last decade the perfect example of this is "tan suit".
When Trudeau first took office, he was the meme of being Canada's young and handsome PM, and he enjoyed a good few years of "honeymoon" period that many leaders can only wish for.
It does absolutely work both ways, but there's a non-incumbent advantage in that, until an opp emerges all the non-incumbent has to do is attack whereas the incumbent has to defend.
I think the problem is that a large and growing part of the population is in a constant state of dissatisfaction, if not downright anger, often being fed or demanding simple solutions to complex problems. At that point it doesn't seem to matter if those solutions actually work as long as they promise change. And when it becomes clear they won't or require long term planning people will just demand new leadership and the cycle continues.
Let's face it. Most problems require patient approaches. Often changes that are made won't show their effects until years or decades later. Unfortunately that encourages short term thinking towards the next election in government and population alike.
It's an interesting theory, but there are other hypotheses out there. One I've heard a lot is that the post-pandemic inflation surge hit everyone, and made all incumbents unpopular. I suppose that if the anti-incumbent results across the globe continue for several more years, we will be able to rule that out?
It's also easier to lie about what the current government has done wrong, there are no laws against it.
You can just lie at a velocity never seen before on this planet, spread falsehoods via social media, breed outrage, spread conspiracies and then elected.
Inflation, distrust of authorities after COVID, deliberate (and automated) spread of disinformation, outright war in Europe, climate change becoming increasingly obvious with nobody doing anything about it (but people very angry any time somebody attempts to do something about it... etc)
It's not a fun time, and I'd hate to be "in charge"
I follow US politics regularly, but I hadn't heard of this so I don't know how well it's known... but it has it's own page so maybe I'm in the minority here.
Indeed, Trudeau had the whole state-funded media to use as his propaganda apparatus on his side - and it's why free speech is under threat trying in Canada and elsewhere, them trying to manufacture consent by so-called "hate speech" for the fascists to gain more control to censor-suppress dissidents who see what they really are.
The machine isn't against the incumbent, it wants to move things to the right. This is why Obama gets mainstream media outrage for superficial things like wearing a tan suit. Also it is why Biden (correctly) got a lot of negative coverage for being too old to serve but people like Trump or Kay Ivey relatively get a pass.
The right also had incumbent disadvantage this year. See:
- Britain's Tory defeat.
- India's and Hungary's main party still winning, but by less than expected. India's main party no longer holds a majority in Parliament.
- In South Korea, the liberal opposition has won the majority of seats in the National Assembly.
Even in developing countries, incumbent disadvantage is almost everywhere. Look at the map in https://abcnews.go.com/538/democrats-incumbent-parties-lost-.... And in a couple examples where the majority gained (Mexico, Dominican Republic, Moldova) they are the left.
He has not (yet) resigned. He has announced his intention to resign. He will step down when a new leader is selected via the internal Liberal leadership race. Additionally, Parliament is prorogued until March 24 via his request of the Governor-General.
“Trudeau to resign as prime minister after Liberal leadership race”
True, but this is normal; two other Prime Ministers have taken this approach over the last 30 years, Brian Mulroney and Jean Chretien both announced their intention to resign, and then held leadership conventions to select a new party leader before actually resigning.
I was clarifying since the original headline (‘Trudeau resigns’) would be misleading to many and especially to an international audience with different types of leadership (eg a president)
- especially since the original source for this was the British broadcaster. While it’s not the norm, he would still have the ability to resign immediately and have someone act in the interim (unless I’m mistaken) until the new leader is selected or force a new election.
(The new link and headline are now accurate and reflect the actual situation.)
One of my big issues with J.T. is his massive waste of money on gun control. The vast majority of guns used in crimes in Canada are illegal guns from the US, with most being hand guns.
The Liberals under J.T. has proposed a ban on assault style weapons (not assault weapons, mind you which are already banned) that so far has cost over $70M without guns being collected. The estimate cost is over $800M to collect them.
The last time we had a gun control fantasy was also under the Liberals. They proposed a long gun registry that they estimated would cost $2M a year. By the time it was cancelled 20 years later, the total cost was over $2B.
This is one area leftists and right wingers can agree on -- gun control doesn't work, it punishes minority communities, it targets the wrong things, and it's written in ways that aren't backed by data.
Leftists want to be armed for community defense (and because Marx and other leftist writers wrote about the importance of being armed).
That said, if I show up at the range with a pride flag on my rifle people lose their shit about it, so I guess we have a ways to go before we've got left-right solidarity there.
I forgot to mention, but the 'assault style weapons' are legal currently. All of the owners have proper licenses, have background checks, and are registered with the government.
Since Trudeau has been elected the likelihood of purchasing a home or finding a job has drastically reduced and continues to fall. Rising tides raise all boats, given that the rent has risen everywhere too.
This creates a divide between the have and have-nots of property ownership and public or private employment. This divides ends in the individuals who have are happy since their investment skyrocketed while the have-nots are left with no hope for their future.
As for employment, the primary job growth is in public sector (government jobs) which are ultimately a parasitic value add to the economy.
Given this, it's easy to see the negative sentiment in Trudeau and his cabinet. This sentiment seems to have hit a crescendo with the recent release of the over-shot budget deficit.
This is almost identical to the US economy, we have decent job growth... until you remove government jobs. It's really insidious how the current setup kills small businesses and drives everyone to government work, if this trend continues will the government just slowly consume everything?
Washington D.C. now is only behind SF and Seattle in average income. If you want money you either work for a sector that is booming or the government.
Hm, I'm unfamiliar with the public:private job ratio in the US. I'd imagine other industries bolster the US more (tech being an obvious one)? Whereas in Canada our biggest industries have dwindled and we typically lose our knowledge-based workers to you gosh darn freedom lovers!
Speaking as US citizen, what policies/legislation could Trudeau have reasonably enacted to alleviate the housing/job market? It's been pretty rough stateside as far as real estate goes, but it doesn't seem like a solution will materialize (that is to say, there's no solution that avoids hurting the wallets of the people in charge).
* limit immigration
* limit foreign ownership of property; Canada is the best place to launder money in the world -- just buy Vancouver or Toronto real estate
* direct investment in sectors of the economy that aren't oil & gas; e.g. not buying a huge pipeline
* incentives to change zoning
* changes to national laws around things like banking regulations and mortgages -- 30 year fixed rate mortgages like in the US aren't a thing in the CAN
* initiatives to lesson other heavy impacts like higher cost of food, fuel, etc. some of these, like the Liberal's Daycare Subsidy were a good start
I'm no economist by any means but most armchair experts I interact tend to believe that this drive in pricing comes from low yield government spending, increased immigration and of course lower rate of residences being built.
IMO, altering immigration levels would have the most tangible affect on the housing and jobs (unsure about the US). I'm not bullish on the idea that we can build residences quickly and the government spending is hard to control with poor financial auditing among the current administration.
If people can't understand why this is happening, understand that Trudeau has been in power for 9 years and basically everything is worse than when he started. And if you want to say, "Blah blah it's happening in other countries", don't bother. We're becoming poorer when compared to all our peer countries.
Is Canada better today then when he started as PM? I struggle to agree that it is. Housing is as bad as it has ever been and the immigration decisions seem to have been so careless that even people that would agree with immigration as a general principal are horrified by it by and large. The Canadian dollar has collapsed VS the USD.
I guess it always ends bad if you stick around long enough.
There are many indigenous communities that now have water that are better off than before he was PM.
Speaking for myself I think things in 2019 were better than 2015. The pandemic and things after the pandemic (hi inflation and spiking interest rates) have not been quite so fun but these are global issues and people around the world have had a similar experience. Arguably there is more Trudeau could have done but some things are beyond his reach (eg. Bank of Canada sets interest rates).
If you're a person without an established home you own you probably feel things are disastrously worse than 2015 when you presumed that surely eventually you'd own one. If you already own a home you probably care quite a bit less.
Housing was deeply dysfunctionally broken in the major cities well before Trudeau became PM in 2015 and the lazy status quo approach of his government ensured that the contagion of housing shortage would spread Canada wide. It's mostly Provincial and Municipal governments that are at fault but plenty of fault for the feds too. Despite the fact that Fed housing policy right now is better than it's ever been the damage has been done.
The CAD is sitting at about $0.70 USD right now, which isn't really outside of it's typical range, and not really unexpected given the difference in interest rate now between Canadian & US interest rates. If you look at historical prices it looks more like business-as-usual, the CAD usually bounces between 0.70-0.80 USD.
This might be splitting hairs, but I think this is more about the strength of USD than the weakness of CAD. I don't know that you can say CAD has "collapsed" when every other major currency has seen a similar (or worse) drop compared to USD over the last 10 years.
Canada is definitely worse than it was ten years ago, but all of the major problems are provincial responsibilities: housing, health care, education, policing.
The largely conservative provinces have done a very good job of blaming Trudeau and immigration for problems that are entirely their own.
The problem with Trudeau's government is he didn't/doesn't consult with provinces very much. They continue to announce programs and initiatives that live in the territory of the provinces without provincial buy in.
If it was one or two provinces you would be correct, but when every province is facing the same issue(s), then the turd starts to stick to the feds... The immigration issue is a prime example, he announced higher than normal targets but didn't consult or work with the provinces about this, which caused many provinces to be taken by surprise and have their social systems overwhelmed by the influx of people. Many of these same systems where still recovering from covid... so yea recipe for disaster.
Out of curiosity, how is the housing & health care situation in those conservative provinces compared to other provinces (like Quebec, where I live in)?
Housing, healthcare and policing being provincial responsibility is an oversimplification. Provinces are basically compelled to comply with the federal Canada Health Act under threat of being taxed for, but not receiving the huge Canada Health Transfers which account for ~12% of provincial revenues. Housing on the supply side is largely provincial, but the feds could still take a larger role. They have had a long time to think of ways to bring in more skilled labour in the construction industry rather than, say, the fast food industry. And let alone thinking ways to solve the housing crisis, the Liberals wouldn't even admit until a few months ago that the price of housing is too high and should go down.
The feds run the RCMP, they set most criminal laws and sentencing, bail policy etc. As Poilievre repeats ad naseum, the same 40 repeat offenders are arrested thousands of times in Vancouver. It doesn't matter how good a job the police do if the justice system refuses to punish them.
I don't know what are the problems we're facing in education but I don't think that is on the top of the list of why Canadians are feeling frustrated with the Liberals.
> The largely conservative provinces have done a very good job of blaming Trudeau and immigration for problems that are entirely their own.
No. Immigration reduces available housing. Immigration overloads the health care system. Immigration strains the education system. Immigration creates ethnic enclaves that are hard to police.
Immigration is a federal responsibility. Trudeau and the Liberals are to blame.
> Is Canada better today then when he started as PM?
As you've already concluded, the answer is absolutely not. The Canada I grew up with, and mind you my family are immigrants from the 90s and early 2000s ourselves, is completely shattered.
Canada is in approximately the same unfortunate position of being a supplicant state of the US. This was apparent as far back as 2018 or so. The US "Commerce Department" recommended sanctions on Canada for a trade violation in timber. The worst case sanctions add about $9,000 to the cost of a new single family home in the US.
"March 2016, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Obama instructed their respective cabinet members responsible for international trade to explore all options for resolving the trade dispute.[32] Canada's international trade minister, Chrystia Freeland, said that "what we have committed to is to make significant, meaningful progress towards a deal—to have the structure, the key elements there a 100 days from now"."
Then:
"April 24, 2017, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said his agency will impose new anti-subsidy tariffs averaging 20 percent on Canadian softwood lumber imports, a move that escalates a long-running trade dispute between the two countries...
"On April 25, 2017, the Trump administration announced plans to impose duties of up to 24% on most Canadian lumber, charging that lumber companies are subsidized by the government..."
Then:
"On August 19, 2024, the US raised tariff rates on imports of Canadian softwood lumber products from 8.05% to 14.54%".
Can you name a similarly wealthy country that is actually better today than it was on the date he started as a PM?
I can't. Seems like something else has been going on. Potentially you could name Ireland, by becoming a tax haven, screwing over everyone else instead.
Since 2015? Easy: Norway, Poland, Greece, Netherlands, Ireland, Singapore, USA probably.
But I do anecdotally agree with your point as a whole: it feels like there has been a slowing or potentially reversal of progress. Perhaps to be expected given the pandemic though.
A big reason driving the collapse of the Canadian dollar is the incumbent government's climate change policy. Since being elected to power, the government has regulated, stalled and effectively defunded the fossil fuel industry, accounting for approx. 22-30% of Canada's GDP. That loss of revenue is felt in the dollar exchange.
This is not true in the slightest. Beyond the fact that the government went so far as to buy a pipeline to ensure added capacity for Alberta oil sands development, they've been enormously supportive of LNG development in BC, approving many projects and recently going so far as to give a $500M loan toward a project.
Readit News
Quite a few accounts who have been here for many years have been breaking the guidelines rather shamefully in this thread. That's dismaying. If established users can't set a good example for others, what chance does this community have? If Hacker News is interesting enough to keep coming back to for years, you owe it to your fellow members not to contribute to destroying it.
p.s. We changed the URL from https://www.bbc.com/news/live/clyjmy7vl64t. Interested readers might want to look at both.
Whatever you think of the truckers' position or protest tactics, any punishment for their actions ought to go through the laws and court system. Trudeau instead essentially told the banking system "You can't do business with those people, they're terrorists." Patio11's words of what happened next:
"The assistant deputy finance minister...said...'The intent was not to get at the families', and when a democratic government starts a sentence that way something deeply #*&$#ed up has happened."
I'm not on the pulse of Canadian politics, so I don't really know what sins or political circumstances have led Trudeau to this point, or if he has any redeeming qualities. Personally, I'm glad to see him gone.
[1] https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/debanking-and-debunki...
(You'll have to Ctrl+F trucker as this blog doesn't seem to have <a name> for headings, as is customary on e.g. Wikipedia.)
The Emergencies Act is part of the laws of Canada:
* https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/e-4.5/
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergencies_Act
And there were court orders:
* https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60356461
* 2022 ONSC 1001: https://www.canlii.org/en/on/onsc/doc/2022/2022onsc1001/2022... ; https://www.attorneygeneral.jus.gov.on.ca/english/docs/ISSUE...
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Declaring the Emergency acts was overwhelmingly popular in Canada and remains one of the most popular things Trudeau ever did. The moves to restrict access to banking affected less than 20 people (and I think they were generally funnelling money from international propaganda groups or committing similar financial crimes).
We put up with the occupation for about two weeks, but we saw a steady escalation and decided to leave town. We stayed with family for two weeks until the convoy was cleared.
I'm very proud of the residents who were brave enough to put up a resistance (the so-called "Battle of Billings Bridge"), and I'm appalled by the response by the local police and the province. I absolutely believe the federal government made the correct choice, and this was proven out in the public hearing after the fact on the use of the Emergency Act.
The convoy drove across the country, broadcasting their intentions on social media. Yet, everyone acted shocked when they did exactly what they said they were going to do.
I hesitate to call them protesters because I don't think they had a permit or a cohesive message beside F* Trudeau, but they were completely disrespectful to other citizens, and I could never defend their actions. However, irrespective of how unpopular their actions were, the courts have deemed the federal government's response unreasonable and unconstitutional, and I agree with that assessment.
The government could have dealt with this earlier and more directly, but whatever passes for "leadership" these days in Canada has proven itself completely inept.
Personally, I would like to see an inquiry into foreign interference in our elections, but I guess that’s not considered a pressing issue anymore.
Blocking a road is a fire hazard and should never have been tolerated by local police for that reason alone. You cannot impede transit in a city.
Also, it takes a couple of hours to get the police to unblock a road. Last time I checked, money movement in bank accounts does not block roads.
Where on earth does this stat come from?
I agree a police response or similar was sensible for the situations you mentioned, but they didn't rise to the level of national emergency.
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Similar concerns happened when Harper and Ottawa mayor at the time denied the rights and freedoms of protestors of the G20.
It's concerning how the "true north, strong, and free" is losing that last part.
Read more at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_G20_Toronto_summit_protes...
Maybe it's just because I'm part of a minority but your entire comment is exactly the issue with Canadian politics. We basically have 0 rights the moment a majority decides that we don't. I guess that's the perks of having an incredibly ineffective constitution.
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I take exception to the framing of “attempts to settle this.” The government used violence and threat of violence to make the problem go away. There wasn’t an attempt at compromise. Do what I say or else isn’t an attempt to settle.
This is what a protest is. (French here). If protesters go as far, and in Canada it was because you did them dirty, then you must sit at a table and negotiate. You must sit at a table and negotiate with everyone in a country. You cannot do someone dirty then complain that they protest.
It’s effects removing the right to protest, and therefore, removing democracy itself. Go live in Singapore?
By your logic they should be.
Isn't that why you have the police, army, etc? You use force to remove those people breaking the laws, not go after their families. That's some USSR shit.
This seems like a pretty big conclusion to reach based on one article and one topic, no? Especially when you, in the same sentence, also recognize that you don't follow Canadian politics?
docs: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/URI/Fragment/Te...
your link: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/archive/debanking-and-debunki...
Find this extremely annoying, especially in search results: I want to start at the beginning of the article/post, and not some random place in the middle—which is where the highlighted snippet in the search results are from, but not helpful for learning the larger context.
It also tends to mess up URLS that you may want to copy-paste as it has that text parameter garbage at the end (often with a sizeable amount of text that needs to be removed).
I think this is important regardless of whether you believe in their specific target of protest or not. The right to peacefully protest is very very important, and your feelings on a specific protest should be wholly divorced from the importance of preserving the right to protest in general.
Nobody was held hostage. People unhappy with their rulers took peacefully to the streets and made noise and peacefully and temporarily interfered with some business activity.
This is the furthest thing from “holding the government hostage”. It’s the adversarial relationship between the populace and the state working exactly as intended and designed.
Wait, are people that shocked that their democratic governments are wiling to act like mobsters/dictators against a minority group just to get their way and appease a majority, when the history books are full of such examples? People must have a short memory then and why history repeating itself is a fact.
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Also how 'dangerous' was the convoy perceived to be?
Were the actions of the Government deemed to be overreach?
Is KD unhealthy slop or delicious, and how do you feel about adding hot dogs or other toppings?
> It's a story of everyone going way too far.
> The government(s) went way overboard with Pfizer proof of purchase QR codes to get lunch. Especially when uptake was 80%+
> They also went overboard by locking down again over the holidays when everyone was already catching the most contagious Omicron. People not being able to go to a gym to stay fit, that already needed a barcode, swayed a lot of the public that things were going on too long.
> But the obnoxiousness of the truckers also went too far for too long. The news of rifles and arrests in Alberta was (obviously) too far.
> I don't have a citation on hand, but at one point more than a third of Canadians did support either the truckers explicitly or their aims, and that's a higher percentage than voted for the current governing party. Support was higher among younger people, sometimes over 50%. But this percentage decreased as time went on.
> The government also completely failed to act diplomatically or to de-escalate the situation. Instead we had inflammatory rhetoric and a focus on some silly flags (which should be condemned, but a lot of people have doubts as to their sincerity, and I've seen some pretty gross signs against the unvaxxed too)
> Some people, even in this comment section, take their rhetoric and opposition too far.
> There is no doubt in my mind that the more time passes, the more we will look at Canada's response to the pandemic (especially in its later years) as a horrendous failure that harmed trust in public health, harmed social cohesion, and harmed our democratic and civil institutions. Everyone failed and everyone suffered as a result.
Meanwhile Trudeau did what... airports and borders. The feds influence here was not high. ArriveCAN was a debacle, obviously. But the trucker thing was US initiated.
I don't think there's anything the feds could have done to head this off. They couldn't make the trucker vax thing not happen, not with Biden insisting on it. They had no control over what was happening in workplaces and schools across the country. Their biggest fault, I think, was being weak -- which the opposition took advantage of to create mayhem and try to bring the govt down.
That the people organizing the protest were in part former oil industry lobbyists and had previously been involved in climate change denying anti-carbon tax protests should also make one pause about what the motivations might be and where the money might be coming from, as well?
Regardless, I think we agree: by January with Omicron showing that it would transmit like crazy regardless of vaccine, mandates everywhere should have been dropped.
The handling of the trucker protest is not why he resigned. It is not why he is unpopular.
I think we need to be careful when reading these opinions to not mix up Americans’ views, Russian trolls with legitimate Canadian discourse.
Canadian politics (not uniquely here) is plagued with petty squabbles. The really meaningful political and social issues don't get any airtime.
120dB train horns at 2AM in the morning in a residential area is not a minor inconvenience.
This just illustrates why pure/Athenian democracy doesn’t work. Madness of the crowds and all that. Decide most issues by plebescite and you get an emotional outcome.
The trucker protests were right in the middle of the Covid supply chain issues. Not defending the actions taken in particular, but it had the potential to be a much worse issue than a minor inconvenience.
people who are geniuses at one thing may be completely out of their depth in other areas
I think this is sadly a demonstration of one of those
Your personal opinion seems to be completely uninformed or misinformed, by the way you tried to frame it as something done to truckers instead of what it actually was: lifting a blockade.
It's even more baffling when taken into account the alleged motivation: COVID-19 restrictions.
> I'm not on the pulse of Canadian politics, (...)
It shows.
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> I don't really know what sins or political circumstances have led Trudeau to this point
> Personally, I'm glad to see him gone
Why do people do this? You don't keep up with Canadian politics and you don't know what led Trudeau to this point, yet you're glad he's gone? Is it not OK anymore to just not have opinions either way, and people have to take a stance on everything?
Now it's all "You should be a 51st state" and "Oh your Trudeau is a COMMUNIST and needs to GO!"
- Wow, for no reason you're glad to see him gone?
Canada is not the US. Why would it matter when the judiciary is not a co-equal branch of government?
i.e. When there is Parliamentary sovereignty/supremacy?
An inferior authority can never legally overrule a superior authority by definition.
Then there is an external guarantor of the rights of the people against the government.
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Uh really? Is this another version of “Both sides” claiming you don’t know the pulse whilst amplifying a more right leaning, niche, view?
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When Trudeau first took office, he was the meme of being Canada's young and handsome PM, and he enjoyed a good few years of "honeymoon" period that many leaders can only wish for.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=2015+justin+trudeau+handsome&df=20...
Let's face it. Most problems require patient approaches. Often changes that are made won't show their effects until years or decades later. Unfortunately that encourages short term thinking towards the next election in government and population alike.
You can just lie at a velocity never seen before on this planet, spread falsehoods via social media, breed outrage, spread conspiracies and then elected.
It's disgusting.
It's not a fun time, and I'd hate to be "in charge"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_tan_suit_controve...
I follow US politics regularly, but I hadn't heard of this so I don't know how well it's known... but it has it's own page so maybe I'm in the minority here.
That and his choice of mustard, and other things. The "Thanks, Obama!" ads, and so on
Unfortunately the bitter partisan divide really amped up in that period, and we're living with the fallout still.
Probably big in some circles, unnoticed in others.
- Britain's Tory defeat.
- India's and Hungary's main party still winning, but by less than expected. India's main party no longer holds a majority in Parliament.
- In South Korea, the liberal opposition has won the majority of seats in the National Assembly.
Even in developing countries, incumbent disadvantage is almost everywhere. Look at the map in https://abcnews.go.com/538/democrats-incumbent-parties-lost-.... And in a couple examples where the majority gained (Mexico, Dominican Republic, Moldova) they are the left.
“Trudeau to resign as prime minister after Liberal leadership race”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-news-conference-1.7...
(The new link and headline are now accurate and reflect the actual situation.)
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The Liberals under J.T. has proposed a ban on assault style weapons (not assault weapons, mind you which are already banned) that so far has cost over $70M without guns being collected. The estimate cost is over $800M to collect them.
The last time we had a gun control fantasy was also under the Liberals. They proposed a long gun registry that they estimated would cost $2M a year. By the time it was cancelled 20 years later, the total cost was over $2B.
Leftists want to be armed for community defense (and because Marx and other leftist writers wrote about the importance of being armed).
That said, if I show up at the range with a pride flag on my rifle people lose their shit about it, so I guess we have a ways to go before we've got left-right solidarity there.
Since Trudeau has been elected the likelihood of purchasing a home or finding a job has drastically reduced and continues to fall. Rising tides raise all boats, given that the rent has risen everywhere too.
This creates a divide between the have and have-nots of property ownership and public or private employment. This divides ends in the individuals who have are happy since their investment skyrocketed while the have-nots are left with no hope for their future.
As for employment, the primary job growth is in public sector (government jobs) which are ultimately a parasitic value add to the economy.
Given this, it's easy to see the negative sentiment in Trudeau and his cabinet. This sentiment seems to have hit a crescendo with the recent release of the over-shot budget deficit.
Thoughts?
Washington D.C. now is only behind SF and Seattle in average income. If you want money you either work for a sector that is booming or the government.
IMO, altering immigration levels would have the most tangible affect on the housing and jobs (unsure about the US). I'm not bullish on the idea that we can build residences quickly and the government spending is hard to control with poor financial auditing among the current administration.
and prayers!
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-gdp-per-capita-rich-...
https://economics.td.com/ca-productivity-bad-to-worse
https://financialpost.com/opinion/justin-trudeau-legacy-coul...
I guess it always ends bad if you stick around long enough.
There are many indigenous communities that now have water that are better off than before he was PM.
Speaking for myself I think things in 2019 were better than 2015. The pandemic and things after the pandemic (hi inflation and spiking interest rates) have not been quite so fun but these are global issues and people around the world have had a similar experience. Arguably there is more Trudeau could have done but some things are beyond his reach (eg. Bank of Canada sets interest rates).
If you're a person without an established home you own you probably feel things are disastrously worse than 2015 when you presumed that surely eventually you'd own one. If you already own a home you probably care quite a bit less.
Housing was deeply dysfunctionally broken in the major cities well before Trudeau became PM in 2015 and the lazy status quo approach of his government ensured that the contagion of housing shortage would spread Canada wide. It's mostly Provincial and Municipal governments that are at fault but plenty of fault for the feds too. Despite the fact that Fed housing policy right now is better than it's ever been the damage has been done.
The CAD is sitting at about $0.70 USD right now, which isn't really outside of it's typical range, and not really unexpected given the difference in interest rate now between Canadian & US interest rates. If you look at historical prices it looks more like business-as-usual, the CAD usually bounces between 0.70-0.80 USD.
This might be splitting hairs, but I think this is more about the strength of USD than the weakness of CAD. I don't know that you can say CAD has "collapsed" when every other major currency has seen a similar (or worse) drop compared to USD over the last 10 years.
The largely conservative provinces have done a very good job of blaming Trudeau and immigration for problems that are entirely their own.
If it was one or two provinces you would be correct, but when every province is facing the same issue(s), then the turd starts to stick to the feds... The immigration issue is a prime example, he announced higher than normal targets but didn't consult or work with the provinces about this, which caused many provinces to be taken by surprise and have their social systems overwhelmed by the influx of people. Many of these same systems where still recovering from covid... so yea recipe for disaster.
The feds run the RCMP, they set most criminal laws and sentencing, bail policy etc. As Poilievre repeats ad naseum, the same 40 repeat offenders are arrested thousands of times in Vancouver. It doesn't matter how good a job the police do if the justice system refuses to punish them.
I don't know what are the problems we're facing in education but I don't think that is on the top of the list of why Canadians are feeling frustrated with the Liberals.
No. Immigration reduces available housing. Immigration overloads the health care system. Immigration strains the education system. Immigration creates ethnic enclaves that are hard to police.
Immigration is a federal responsibility. Trudeau and the Liberals are to blame.
As you've already concluded, the answer is absolutely not. The Canada I grew up with, and mind you my family are immigrants from the 90s and early 2000s ourselves, is completely shattered.
What happened?
I hate to be repeat a meme but land value tax would fix this.
That's the problem with J.T., our economic growth has been vastly Government employees.. our private sector is dying..
"March 2016, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Obama instructed their respective cabinet members responsible for international trade to explore all options for resolving the trade dispute.[32] Canada's international trade minister, Chrystia Freeland, said that "what we have committed to is to make significant, meaningful progress towards a deal—to have the structure, the key elements there a 100 days from now"."
Then:
"April 24, 2017, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said his agency will impose new anti-subsidy tariffs averaging 20 percent on Canadian softwood lumber imports, a move that escalates a long-running trade dispute between the two countries...
"On April 25, 2017, the Trump administration announced plans to impose duties of up to 24% on most Canadian lumber, charging that lumber companies are subsidized by the government..."
Then:
"On August 19, 2024, the US raised tariff rates on imports of Canadian softwood lumber products from 8.05% to 14.54%".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_s...
I can't. Seems like something else has been going on. Potentially you could name Ireland, by becoming a tax haven, screwing over everyone else instead.
But I do anecdotally agree with your point as a whole: it feels like there has been a slowing or potentially reversal of progress. Perhaps to be expected given the pandemic though.
https://www.ipolitics.ca/news/crown-corp-loans-500-million-f...