RIP Canada

[Anonymous]

Saskatchewan and Alberta are now a sea of blue, with the defeat of Ralph Goodale in Saskatchewan removing from Trudeau's cabinet the only one with the maturity to wear the long pants.



If that's not division, what is? There are now three distinct Canadas — the Prairies, Quebec and the Rest.



Trudeau said "From coast to coast, tonight, Canadians rejected division and negativity," he said. "They rejected cuts and austerity, and they voted in favour of a progressive agenda and strong action on climate change.



"I have heard you, my friends. You are sending our Liberal team back to work; back to Ottawa with a clear mandate."



A rejection of "division and negativity?" A "clear mandate?"



The man is clearly delusional.

[Anonymous]

The Conservatives won all fourteen seats in Saskatchewan. ac_dance

[Anonymous]

NDP backing of Trudeau will come with big price tag



One thing that's certain, a Liberal minority is going to be expensive.



The last time Canada had a Liberal minority propped up by the NDP was under Pierre Trudeau between 1972 and 1974. In order to keep the NDP happy with increased social programs, the Liberals back then ramped up federal spending by 27% in just two budgets, even after adjusting for inflation and population growth.



During this year's election, [size=150]the NDP promised to spend about $100 billion more over the next four years than the Liberals did.[/size] They pledged pharmacare and daycare and cheap housing.



Expect much of that to be delivered by the Liberals in return for NDP support. [size=150]Getting a Trudeau Liberal to bribe a New Democrat with your money is never hard.[/size]



And, of course, [size=150]the fate of the Trans Mountain pipeline (and Alberta's economy) is now in the hands of two parties that are drunk on the climate "crisis" koolaid.[/size]



The Libs are also now the party of the Greater Toronto Area (the GTA). That's the only region of the country in which they held their own in Tuesday's election. Everywhere else they lost popularity and seats — but not the GTA.



And that means Ottawa will get bigger and more expensive, too, because GTA voters love big government.



They must. The Liberals dominated in that region on Monday because they successfully tied Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer to the cuts being made provincially by Conservative Premier Doug Ford.



Never mind that Scheer wasn't proposing real cuts to Ottawa's spending. He just promised to slow increases until federal spending was a little more manageable. Still, that was enough to scare GTA voters into supporting Trudeau — again.



While I'm on the twin topics of Ontario and Andrew Scheer, let me argue that the Tories must get rid of Scheer before the next election if they hope to save Canada from a third consecutive Trudeau government.



I spent much of the campaign trying to decide whether Scheer was more like Robert Stanfield (the very able former Nova Scotia premier who lost three federal elections to Pierre Trudeau) or Joe Clark (the ineffective, short-term PM wedged in between two Liberal majorities).



Then it struck me, Scheer is most like Tim Hudak, the inept former Ontario Conservative leader who bumbled and stumbled his way to two consecutive losses against beatable Liberal governments.



Like Hudak, Scheer was incapable of anticipating tough questions that were going to arise during the campaign, then fumbled his answers badly when they were inevitably asked.





Hudak lost the 2014 Ontario election in the first week when he was asked how he planned to reconcile his pledge of a million new jobs with his promise to cut 100,000 public-sector jobs. Although that was a perfectly predictable question, Hudak had no good answer.



Compare that to Scheer's vacillating answers when asked about abortion, samesex marriage, hiring a consulting firm to dig up dirt on People's Party leader Maxime Bernier, his padded resume or his dual Canadian-american citizenship.



Then there were Scheer's unremarkable policy planks that in many cases could be called Liberal-lite.



Scheer improved his party's standing in his first election as leader. But so did Hudak. The bigger lesson should have been both men failed to beat highly vulnerable opponents.



Justin Trudeau was the most beatable PM since Kim Campbell in 1993. Yet despite his scandals and policy failures, Scheer couldn't topple Trudeau.



In all likelihood, it's downhill from here for Scheer.



In his second provincial election in 2014, Hudak lost ground despite going up against Liberal Kathleen Wynne, whose party was mired in controversy and public debt.



I expect the same fate for Scheer and the Conservatives if he is around as leader for the next federal campaign.

[Anonymous]

I voted for the PPC.

[cc]

We did also - we knew the conservative would win our riding, so did a protest vote



I feel better about myself having done it

[Anonymous]

We did also - we knew the conservative would win our riding, so did a protest vote



I feel better about myself having done it

That would have been too risky in my riding.

[cc]

We are going to see and hear a lot about this aspect



https://www.blazingcatfur.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/alberta-transfers.jpg">

[Odinson]

I voted..



And so did Kreml.

[Anonymous]

We are going to see and hear a lot about this aspect



https://www.blazingcatfur.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/alberta-transfers.jpg">

I took a look at the #Wexit..



There are a lot of people telling Albertans and Saskatchewaners to stop whining.

 

Ottawa would never do anything to harm Ontario's auto industry or Quebec's dairy industry.

[Anonymous]

People's Party may have cost the Tories 6 ridings on election night



Votes for the People's Party of Canada may have cost the Conservatives up to six ridings in Monday's federal election, an analysis of election results shows.



Polling before the election showed the Conservatives were the second choice of about half of PPC voters, according to polling done by Ipsos, implying about one PPC voters in two would have voted Conservative if the party hadn't existed.



"The data suggests that the Conservative Party would likely get around half of the vote from the People's Party, understanding that for many people the People's Party was a none-of-the-above vote," says Sean Simpson of Ipsos.



In five ridings Liberals won Monday, the Conservative vote total plus half the PPC vote total is higher than the Liberal candidate's.



With half the PPC votes added, the Conservatives win these close ridings:



Miramichi-Grand Lake (Liberal by 414 votes)

Kitchener-Conestoga (Liberal by 273 votes)

Richmond Hill (Liberal by 112 votes)

Yukon (Liberal by 72 votes)

Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam (Liberal by 339 votes)



In a sixth riding, South Okanagan-West Kootenay, adding half the PPC votes to the Conservatives' results in a two-vote NDP victory, which would have meant an automatic recount. With so small a margin, it's hard to predict how that would have been resolved. (On Monday, the NDP won the riding by 796 votes)

https://globalnews.ca/news/6071771/ppc-conservative-spoiler-election/">https://globalnews.ca/news/6071771/ppc- ... -election/">https://globalnews.ca/news/6071771/ppc-conservative-spoiler-election/



Not enough to make a difference, but five more seats would be nice.

[Anonymous]

People's Party may have cost the Tories 6 ridings on election night



Votes for the People's Party of Canada may have cost the Conservatives up to six ridings in Monday's federal election, an analysis of election results shows.



Polling before the election showed the Conservatives were the second choice of about half of PPC voters, according to polling done by Ipsos, implying about one PPC voters in two would have voted Conservative if the party hadn't existed.



"The data suggests that the Conservative Party would likely get around half of the vote from the People's Party, understanding that for many people the People's Party was a none-of-the-above vote," says Sean Simpson of Ipsos.



In five ridings Liberals won Monday, the Conservative vote total plus half the PPC vote total is higher than the Liberal candidate's.



With half the PPC votes added, the Conservatives win these close ridings:



Miramichi-Grand Lake (Liberal by 414 votes)

Kitchener-Conestoga (Liberal by 273 votes)

Richmond Hill (Liberal by 112 votes)

Yukon (Liberal by 72 votes)

Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam (Liberal by 339 votes)



In a sixth riding, South Okanagan-West Kootenay, adding half the PPC votes to the Conservatives' results in a two-vote NDP victory, which would have meant an automatic recount. With so small a margin, it's hard to predict how that would have been resolved. (On Monday, the NDP won the riding by 796 votes)

https://globalnews.ca/news/6071771/ppc-conservative-spoiler-election/">https://globalnews.ca/news/6071771/ppc- ... -election/">https://globalnews.ca/news/6071771/ppc-conservative-spoiler-election/



Not enough to make a difference, but five more seats would be nice.

I was hoping the PPC would win at least one seat.

[Anonymous]

PM  doubles down on counter productive eco agenda



Call it Justin Trudeau's Kiss Alberta Goodbye strategy.



If reports on Tuesday are accurate, when the prime minister returns to work from his post-election surfing vacation, he will appoint a cabinet that doubles his efforts to build a "green" economy and battle climate change.



No doubt this is what he himself truly wants, but it is also a suck up to the NDP and Bloc to keep his minority government in power.



Oh, yes, and Trudeau supposedly will also beef up Ottawa's intergovernmental affairs apparatus to increase outreach to the West, where his party has no representation between Winnipeg and Vancouver.



Frankly, if Trudeau is going to do the former, he can save his breath (and taxpayers' money) by not wasting any time on the latter.



If our Green Elf of a PM insists on doubling down on his eco agenda, then no amount of intergovernmental outreach will repair the rupture between Alberta and Saskatchewan and the federal government.



If Trudeau is convinced he can "phase out" the oilsands, stop pipeline construction and rob the West of tens of thousands of high-paying energy-sector jobs (to say nothing of bankrupting thousands of businesses), all while somehow magically making us feel good about it, then he is an even lighter-weight than I imagined.



But let's look just at Trudeau's supposed pledge to get even more environmental the second time around.



He seems intent on replicating the mistakes of Ontario's Green Energy plan under former premiers Dalton Mcguinty and Kathleen Wynne. This shouldn't come as a great surprise. Many of the people behind Ontario's disastrous policies in the 2000s and early 2010s are now senior advisors in the Trudeau government.



The wind turbines everywhere, the heavily subsidized solar farms that — d'uh — couldn't be connected to the power grid, the huge subsidies for exotic electric cars. All that and more, doubled electricity rates in Ontario in a period of six years. It also cost the province 200,000 jobs as manufacturers transferred operations to the States and elsewhere.



The price tag (over $50 billion) gave Ontario the highest debt of any non-national government in the world and in the end, according to the province's auditor general, there was no emission reductions.



Now the same people, re-elected by the same Greater Toronto Area voters, are intent on inflicting the same useless, expensive suffering on the entire country — and in the process driving Alberta to the brink of separation.



Trudeau's save-the-planet obsession will drive away jobs and investments nationally, as effectively Ontario's schemes did provincially.



Already, Statistics Canada figures show a loss of over $100 billion in energy investment since the Liberals took over in 2015 (and that was before Encana left the country).



Plus, on Monday, the Conference Board projected that Trudeau's carbon tax alone will cost the Canadian (not just the Western) economy up to 50,000 jobs as manufacturers, mining companies, chemical producers, pulp and paper mills and oil and gas companies vacate the country. That will rob Canadians of tens of billions in income, while our emissions will simply be transferred elsewhere.



I have little doubt that Trudeau and his closest advisors are convinced it will be simple to convert to a carbon-free economy, that Canada will prosper by showing the world a future powered by wind, solar, bug burps and unicorn flatulence is possible.



But if he thinks he can somehow woo the West by promising us all jobs as solarpanel installers and relationship counsellors, he may as well call his strategy Kiss Alberta Goodbye.



Our energy workers aren't dumb enough to think they can earn the same livings writing code for smartphone apps or learning to serve organic, fair-trade, pour-over coffee.

[Anonymous]

Alberta Premier Jason Kenney says federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault is an "extremist," but maintains his relationship with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is "professional."



In an interview with The West Block's Mercedes Stephenson, Kenney reiterated concerns with the federal government's policies on protecting the environment: specifically, a ban on tanker traffic on B.C's north coast and major changes to the structure of how the impacts of oil and gas projects get assessed.



His assessment of Trudeau's environment minister, former Equiterre activist Steven Guilbeault, was blunt.



Kenney called him an "environmental extremist," and said his appointment to the role remains "very concerning" to Albertans.



In particular, the question of how best to get to net-zero emissions by 2050 is one that continues to be a challenging prospect.



Trudeau has doubled down repeatedly on that commitment, and Alberta's economy is still struggling amid years of ongoing volatility to the price of oil and the world weighs similar questions about transitioning to greener technology and renewable energies.



Kenney argued the answer is not about turning off Alberta oil and gas, but about developing better emission reduction technologies.



"We hope the federal government, instead of just hammering the biggest job-creating industry in the country, works with us to develop, adopt technologies like expanding carbon capture utilization and storage that can help those energy companies achieve their net-zero goals," he said.