Trudeau and the Liberal party wanted ranked ballots and not proportional representation. They formed a committee to study the issue with the Liberal party getting 6 seats, the Conservatives getting 3 seats and the NDP getting just 1 seat. The Block and Green party were then given a non-voting seat on the committee.
There was a lot of push back that they were stacking the deck on electoral reform, so the Liberal party finally relented and change the number of seats based on the popular vote. The committee was now made up with 12 people with the Liberal party holding just 5 seats.
The result was that the committee put together a report recommending a system of proportional representation. It seems like this wasn’t the electoral reform that Trudeau wanted so they dropped the issue.
If they had gone ahead with a system based on proportional representation, I’m not sure if the Liberal party would be in any better position than they are now. However, I guess it depends how Canadians react to this story and how far the floor drop out from the Liberal party.
It sucks, but if one is going to abandon one’s liberal principals (e.g. by making lame excuses for someone who can’t properly apologise for wearing blackface) – even “strategically” and in the name of “compromise” or because the opposition is demonstrably worse – then there’s no point in being a liberal. It is not up to me to compromise on core and low-hurdle principles, it’s up to Trudeau and Franken to do better in that regard.
In this case, it’s because it’s not taking from African American culture, but from Arabian culture. The one where he was pretending to be Harry Belafonte is blackface, because Belfonte is of African descent.
I was aware that the Elizabeth May was playing footsie with separatists and those who are anti-abortion but I was unaware of her playing footsie with bigots. What story are you referring to here?
I did hear about the racists who abandoned the NDP for the Green party, however May did react saying that there was no room for racism in the Green Party.
As part of the Green Party’s effort to appear as a party that “transcends left-right politics”, they’ve ran some pretty bigoted candidates over the years.
I’m not saying it’s standard policy, but May has approved candidates like Luc Saint-Hilaire and Monika Schaefer to run under the Green name.
Accusing other liberals of abandoning their principles is exactly what I’m talking about. Liberals are not homogenous; we get to disagree, one would hope without insults or accusations of apostasy.
I feel that his apology was sincere. FYI we don’t have a history of “blackface” in Canada being a thing. It’s not a defining part of our history as it is in the U.S., so it doesn’t come with the same racist connotations. Dressing up at a costume party is not evidence of racism for reasonable people, only evidence of being foolish, in other words, human.
Wow! It’s almost like white people the world over often don’t understand racism and how it impacts communities of color, and therefore will often ignore those critical issues in their policies and in who they include in their decision making processes! But that can’t be right? Aren’t progressives ALWAYS anti-racist? /s
This was 18,19 years ago. This was not done with malice., This was clumsy, and privileged, and idiotic, but that’s what a 29-year-old SON OF THE FORMER PRIME MINISTER is going to be.
Meanwhile, ‘liberal’ hand wringing and performative outrage over this judgement-slip 18 years ago will help the Conservatives , who actually will hurt POC in the here-and-now with austerity and other bad policies.
There’s a reason why we have statutes of limitations, so that every mistake you’ve made doesn’t mean you’re hounded like Jean-Pierre Valjean for the rest of your life.
Liberalism used to mean getting mad at relevant things going on the world and getting out in the streets. Now it’s about staying at home and getting mad at irrelevant things on the screen. It’s why modern Liberalism is losing, and it’s why modern liberalism deserves to lose – say what you will about conservatives, they show loyalty and show up to vote instead of being at home on the fainting couch over something that happened 18 years ago. .
I don’t love proportional representation. I don’t love any voting system. There’s two reasons I think we need a change:
Our current system is the worst of the worst, just a big stupid catastrophe with terrible outcomes.
Our current political structure is inhabited by people who have gamed out the current system. A new system would cause upheaval of political strategy and maybe a short period where people won by reverting to trying to have the best policy rather than the best strategy.
Well, Trudeau is probably toast, but given the alternative, I hope not.
What is particularly striking is how many of his scandals have been own-goals that a conservative would have weathered with ease. His errors have primarily been transgressions of left/center values, but they are adeptly weaponized by conservatives who couldn’t care less about the specific cases involved.
I guess one lesson is that you should not broadcast ideological positions unless you are actually prepared to follow-through on them. Center/Left parties love to embrace gender and racial equality for the photo opportunities, but fall short on doing the hard work involved… The sad part is that these continued gaffs will be weaponized by parities that do not share in the underlying ideology, but are happy to use those tenets as cudgels to gain power.
I think we all see the irony in this case, but I’m beginning to question whether taking the “high road” is always the best route in these situations… I want to believe it is, but it would be nice to see some sustained success on the left for a change.
In this case, I think it’s also influenced by the way the Green Party doesn’t want to be thought of as “progressive”, even though they’re rallying around a stereotypically lefty issue.
They’ll run ex-conservatives as well as ex-liberals, and some of the candidates have an interesting Log Cabin Republican vibe, except with environmental concern in place of sexuality.
Why is it OK to point out the good things someone did 18 years ago as evidence of their good character but not to point out the bad things they did as evidence of poor character?
And it’s also about some people’s willingness to actively or passively enforce/enable those unfair and often denigrating social structures, because they themselves aren’t directly subject to or affected by the real life negative impact of them.
Fuckin’ A.
Just do it already, if you’re so very pressed; but then go ahead and fully accept the consequences of your choices and actions, without complaining about them like a clueless dickhead.
Bottom line; wear blackface or brownface, and many people will take that as a signal that you are an asshole who, at the very least, is ‘okay’ with racism and mocking people who are lower in the social hierarchy then yourself.
