What is Wrong With Canada That Can be Fixed by Reform?

[Evilroddy]

To All:

Canada is a great country to live in, one of the best in the world, I'd comfortably wager. But no country is perfect and any country can be improved. I'd like to get perspectives on what others, Canadians and non-Canadians, think is wrong with Canada, why they think it is wrong, how serious the wrongness is and how it might be fixed either by the society, the economy or the state. Feel free to address multiple issues but I would ask posters to make a separate post for each issue you offer up.

Thank you in advance and please play nice.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

 

[Evilroddy]

I will offer up this. Canada needs to learn and practice how to deal with its First Nations honestly and honourably while First Nations must learn to deal with Canada by arriving at some kind of tribal or confederation long-term consensuses so that both sides can negotiate in good faith to craft enduring compromise solutions that allow First Nations communities to flourish and grow as distinct cultural communities with economic vitality.

This is not an existential problem for Canada but it is for many First Nations communities under Canadian jurisdiction. It is serious if Canada wants to be free of accusations of hypocrisy when it criticises other states for mistreating minority populations and it will begin to remove the mantle of guilt we as Canadians have inherited from our forefathers who so mistreated when they repeatedly attempted to forcibly assimilate our indigenous peoples and their cultures.

The fixes for this are many but first and foremost must be the recognition of indigenous people's limited autonomy within the Canadian federation, an autonomy much like provinces have. That autonomy would be both pseudo-territorial and transterritorial allowing First Nations to control territories they are ceded by treaty in conjunction with provincial/territorial governments and to deal with the Federal Government as a trans-provincial political bloc representing all First Nations common interests. In other words the creation of a large virtual First Nations province without a single and real territoy but with real power to empower First Nations to control their own manifold destinies.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

 

[swing_voter]

Canada needs to become America. All ten provinces become states.

We'll tell the indians to stfu.

 

[Evilroddy]

Canada needs to become America. All ten provinces become states.

We'll tell the indians to stfu.

Swing_voter:

Thank you for your well thought out valuable insights. Don't call us; we'll call you!

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy

 

[stevecanuck]

We need a triple-e senate. All of Canada is ruled by 2 provinces that don't give a damn for the rest of us.

 

[soylentgreen]

I will offer up this. Canada needs to learn and practice how to deal with its First Nations honestly and honourably while First Nations must learn to deal with Canada by arriving at some kind of tribal or confederation long-term consensuses so that both sides can negotiate in good faith to craft enduring compromise solutions that allow First Nations communities to flourish and grow as distinct cultural communities with economic vitality.

This is not an existential problem for Canada but it is for many First Nations communities under Canadian jurisdiction. It is serious if Canada wants to be free of accusations of hypocrisy when it criticises other states for mistreating minority populations and it will begin to remove the mantle of guilt we as Canadians have inherited from our forefathers who so mistreated when they repeatedly attempted to forcibly assimilate our indigenous peoples and their cultures.

The fixes for this are many but first and foremost must be the recognition of indigenous people's limited autonomy within the Canadian federation, an autonomy much like provinces have. That autonomy would be both pseudo-territorial and transterritorial allowing First Nations to control territories they are ceded by treaty in conjunction with provincial/territorial governments and to deal with the Federal Government as a trans-provincial political bloc representing all First Nations common interests. In other words the creation of a large virtual First Nations province without a single and real territoy but with real power to empower First Nations to control their own manifold destinies.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

The only indigenous people who are doing well out of colonisation have been the maori. Not that they have had a perfect relationship or not been exploited but the maori did one thing other indigenous have failed to do. Which is force the english to sit at the table and create a treaty.
This has left us with something canada and other countries do not have. Basically the treaty gave the english the right to rule but gave the maori ownership of land and resources.

https://theconversation.com/why-the...-have-fared-better-than-those-in-canada-84980

The promise has not been consistently kept, but the treaty does give moral and increasingly political and jurisprudential authority to the Maori claim to self-determination. The treaty means that Maori do not contest the post-settler presence, but they do contest the Crown exercising a unilateral sovereign authority.

In 2015, the Waitangi Tribunal, which hears claims against the Crown for breaches of the treaty, found that the agreement was not a cession of sovereignty as the Crown had always claimed. While the government does not accept the finding, and it’s not legally binding, it affirms the Maori position on self-determination.

It also affirms a Maori way of thinking about contemporary politics. It raises possibilities for deeper introspection about Maori as nations, and Maori as citizens, in ways that are not apparent in Trudeau’s interpretation of the UN’s Indigenous declaration as it pertains to Canada.

Your indigenous need to claim back sovereignty. Your government needs to learn how self determination works.

 

[Surrealistik]

To All:

Canada is a great country to live in, one of the best in the world, I'd comfortably wager. But no country is perfect and any country can be improved. I'd like to get perspectives on what others, Canadians and non-Canadians, think is wrong with Canada, why they think it is wrong, how serious the wrongness is and how it might be fixed either by the society, the economy or the state. Feel free to address multiple issues but I would ask posters to make a separate post for each issue you offer up.

Thank you in advance and please play nice.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

Reinstate the public/per vote subsidy and public funding of elections.

Institute federal and provincial mixed-member proportional representation.

Put stringent limits on private and professional lobbying.

Severely punish violations of campaign finance laws including non-reporting up to requiring special elections for replacement of politicos that run afoul of non-trivial instances.

Institute a national pharma and mental health/addiction rehabilitation programs.

Legalize, regulate and tax prostitution.

Implement either a negative income tax or an MBI.

Endeavour to transition away from mining and energy towards manufacturing and services; we are still disastrously dependent on the sale of our raw materials which are then sold back to us processed at an upcharge.

Get the NDP into national leadership; Trudeau is blatantly and unrepentantly corrupt, and Erin is frankly a joke who would be no better.

Everything else will follow.

 

[Luce]

To All:

Canada is a great country to live in, one of the best in the world, I'd comfortably wager. But no country is perfect and any country can be improved. I'd like to get perspectives on what others, Canadians and non-Canadians, think is wrong with Canada, why they think it is wrong, how serious the wrongness is and how it might be fixed either by the society, the economy or the state. Feel free to address multiple issues but I would ask posters to make a separate post for each issue you offer up.

Thank you in advance and please play nice.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

You need to be less aggressive, militarily. Don't think we haven't seen you eyeballing our potato mines in Idaho. Do not assume even for an instant that we haven't noticed that 8 out of 10 Canadians live within 100 miles of America. Around here, we call that "massing on the border." Do not imagine that we haven't seen the truth behind poutine AND Tim Horton's, which is to say ways of normalizing creeping Canadianism. We have not forgotten The War of the Pig, or that mess in 1812 when Laura Secord led your barbarian hordes out of Ontario in an unprovoked attack on our peace-loving peoples.

I have heard the arguments about that last one, how "Canada didn't even exist in 1812," but you and I both know that's a bunch of crap. Canada didn't just appear in 1867. It was there for at least 100 years before that, otherwise all the French people living there would have drowned.

You guys are getting awfully lippy for a former iron curtain nation. You don't have Kruschev to bail you out anymore. Watch your step, eh.

 

[OlNate]

To All:

Canada is a great country to live in, one of the best in the world, I'd comfortably wager. But no country is perfect and any country can be improved. I'd like to get perspectives on what others, Canadians and non-Canadians, think is wrong with Canada, why they think it is wrong, how serious the wrongness is and how it might be fixed either by the society, the economy or the state. Feel free to address multiple issues but I would ask posters to make a separate post for each issue you offer up.

Thank you in advance and please play nice.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

Heya, Roddy. I think one of the best things in Canada is that there is no glaring issue to be solved via extremism or revolution...lol... Boring, but thank God for boring in today's world, no?

If we're bleeding, it's from a lot of little cuts, no single big one. I'd love to see corporate influence removed from politics, but that's not realistic. I'd love to see spending brought into the realm of sanity, rather than the $600 pencil sharpeners being bought in school boards. Doing that would enable us to have much more bang for our tax bucks, and would lead to some of the more expensive programs that would bring us in line with our European friends.

But, honestly, our biggest challenge is to avoid joining our American friends in their downward spiral. We need to remain Canadian. The drama and the hate and turmoil and bullshit have no place here. Sadly, our fringes appear to be growing on both sides, and cooler heads are harder to find. I'm worried about us....we need to move forward, but we need to do it as ourselves. The tendency of the far right and far left in our country, doing their best to emulate their American counterparts, is deeply disturbing.

 

[Evilroddy]

...

But, honestly, our biggest challenge is to avoid joining our American friends in their downward spiral. We need to remain Canadian. The drama and the hate and turmoil and bullshit have no place here. Sadly, our fringes appear to be growing on both sides, and cooler heads are harder to find. I'm worried about us....we need to move forward, but we need to do it as ourselves. The tendency of the far right and far left in our country, doing their best to emulate their American counterparts, is deeply disturbing.

OlNate:

This is an excellent point! I fully agree, although this growing political/ideological polarity is not limited to the USA alone. It's happening in parts of South America, Australia, Thailand, Europe, India and Israel too, to name but a few. It's just that the USA is right next door and their dirty laundry piles up in our minds because our lazy media just parrots American news for half their broadcasts and news articles. The CBC and Canadian digital media need to become a global force to be reckoned with so that we can spread the concepts favourable to community and compromise while others tear themselves apart following absolutism, fundamentalism and zealotry.

Cheers and be well, sir.
Evilroddy.

 

[Surrealistik]

OlNate:

This is an excellent point! I fully agree, although this growing political/ideological polarity is not limited to the USA alone. It's happening in parts of South America, Australia, Thailand, Europe, India and Israel too, to name but a few. It's just that the USA is right next door and their dirty laundry piles up in our minds because our lazy media just parrots American news for half their broadcasts and news articles. The CBC and Canadian digital media need to become a global force to be reckoned with so that we can spread the concepts favourable to community and compromise while others tear themselves apart following absolutism, fundamentalism and zealotry.

Cheers and be well, sir.
Evilroddy.

Heya, Roddy. I think one of the best things in Canada is that there is no glaring issue to be solved via extremism or revolution...lol... Boring, but thank God for boring in today's world, no?

If we're bleeding, it's from a lot of little cuts, no single big one. I'd love to see corporate influence removed from politics, but that's not realistic. I'd love to see spending brought into the realm of sanity, rather than the $600 pencil sharpeners being bought in school boards. Doing that would enable us to have much more bang for our tax bucks, and would lead to some of the more expensive programs that would bring us in line with our European friends.

But, honestly, our biggest challenge is to avoid joining our American friends in their downward spiral. We need to remain Canadian. The drama and the hate and turmoil and bullshit have no place here. Sadly, our fringes appear to be growing on both sides, and cooler heads are harder to find. I'm worried about us....we need to move forward, but we need to do it as ourselves. The tendency of the far right and far left in our country, doing their best to emulate their American counterparts, is deeply disturbing.

I'm curious as to what you two consider to be the 'far left' and the 'far right'.

 

[Evilroddy]

I'm curious as to what you two consider to be the 'far left' and the 'far right'.

Surrealistic:

I reason as follows:

Far-right: People who want to let money, skin and faith drive them to militancy using firearms and physical violence. Far-left: People who want to let denial of problematic history, pronouns and Utopianism drive them to militancy using lawfare and verbal/social violence. In a single phrase those who will not compromise because they are too absorbed in their own world-view.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

 

[RetiredUSN]

Heya, Roddy. I think one of the best things in Canada is that there is no glaring issue to be solved via extremism or revolution...lol... Boring, but thank God for boring in today's world, no?

If we're bleeding, it's from a lot of little cuts, no single big one. I'd love to see corporate influence removed from politics, but that's not realistic. I'd love to see spending brought into the realm of sanity, rather than the $600 pencil sharpeners being bought in school boards. Doing that would enable us to have much more bang for our tax bucks, and would lead to some of the more expensive programs that would bring us in line with our European friends.

But, honestly, our biggest challenge is to avoid joining our American friends in their downward spiral. We need to remain Canadian. The drama and the hate and turmoil and bullshit have no place here. Sadly, our fringes appear to be growing on both sides, and cooler heads are harder to find. I'm worried about us....we need to move forward, but we need to do it as ourselves. The tendency of the far right and far left in our country, doing their best to emulate their American counterparts, is deeply disturbing.

Canadian trust in media is still at 52% (not great)

USA trust in media is at 32%. (absolutely horrible)

American media has totally lost it's way. Doesn't it seem strange to you that a American institution that was built on top of the 1st amendment, is the very institution that shits all over it by choosing favor over truth?

You're right. Please don't allow Canada to emulate any country...... and especially the USA.

 

[Evilroddy]

Canadian trust in media is still at 52% (not great)

USA trust in media is at 32%. (absolutely horrible)

American media has totally lost it's way. Doesn't it seem strange to you that a American institution that was built on top of the 1st amendment, is the very institution that shits all over it by choosing favor over truth?

You're right. Please don't allow Canada to emulate any country...... and especially the USA.

RetiredUSN:

Infotainment = bread and games, pitting coloured faction against coloured faction (who don't even know why their in opposition) while obsessively watching the political arena. This keeps the people/plebs divided while the patricians and emperor rule absolutely. It's an old recipie for social control, right up there with organised religion and debt.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

 

[Surrealistik]

Far-left: People who want to let denial of problematic history, pronouns and Utopianism drive them to militancy using lawfare and verbal/social violence. In a single phrase those who will not compromise because they are too absorbed in their own world-view.

I'm assuming 'lawfare' is a deliberate choice here, rather than a typo; what does that entail exactly? Using the law/legislative process to codify and advance one's agenda, i.e. one of the core objectives of politics?

Also, verbal and social violence are basically universal in politics, as is failure/refusal to compromise, whether someone is left, right, centrist, or whatever the ****.

 

[Evilroddy]

RetiredUSN:

Infotainment = bread and games, pitting coloured faction against coloured faction (who don't even know why their in opposition) while obsessively watching the political arena. This keeps the people/plebs divided while the patricians and emperor rule absolutely. It's an old recipie for social control, right up there with organised religion and debt.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

They're, not their. Crap, I have got to proofread better! Apologies.

 

[RetiredUSN]

They're, not their. Crap, I have got to proofread better! Apologies.

The grammar police aren't on yet, so I think you're safe.

 

[Evilroddy]

I'm assuming 'lawfare' is a deliberate choice here, rather than a typo; what does that entail exactly? Using the law/legislative process to codify and advance one's agenda, i.e. one of the core objectives of politics?

Also, verbal and social violence are basically universal in politics, as is failure/refusal to compromise, whether someone is left, right, centrist, or whatever the ****.

Surrealistik:

Lawfare means using the legal system and the law as a political weapon against individuals or blocs who express political views with which a powerful group disagrees and wants suppressed. In the old days and they're still on the books, sedition laws were used to do this. Now tribunals with dangerously broad mandates do this.

Verbal violence means using Intimmidation and crowd tactics to shut down the free exchange of ideas in a society and to demonise political opponents. Forcefully preventing someone from speaking by shouting them down or physically preventing an audience from access to a speaker in a private or public space are examples of this.

Social violence means using the out of doors to mete out violence or damage to the public in order to force the recognition and eventual acceptance of a bloc's political agenda. Protests where property damage or violence to persons are used, riots and street violence are examples of this.

I hope these definitions clear up any grey areas you might have with my earlier answer to your question.

Degree and frequency of use, not just the existence of the tactics of verbal and social violence and lawfare are the issues I have with the extremists on both ends of the political agenda. I have no problem with a bloc organising a peaceful boycott to bring about the political changes they wish to see. I do have a problem with folks intimmidating others to respect a boycott or blocking public infrastructure to enforce their boycott. Protests are fine. Violent protests and riots are not. Asking me to use certain pronouns or being offended if I don't are fine but compelling me to use novel pronouns under threat of professional dismissal or legal entanglement and sanction is unacceptable. So degree of intensity and frequency of use are the issues I have with the "fars" extremists.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

 

[Surrealistik]

Surrealistik:

Lawfare means using the legal system and the law as a political weapon against individuals or blocs who express political views with which a powerful group disagrees and wants suppressed. In the old days and they're still on the books, sedition laws were used to do this. Now tribunals with dangerously broad mandates do this.

Verbal violence means using Intimmidation and crowd tactics to shut down the free exchange of ideas in a society and to demonise political opponents. Forcefully preventing someone from speaking by shouting them down or physically preventing an audience from access to a speaker in a private or public space are examples of this.

Social violence means using the out of doors to mete out violence or damage to the public in order to force the recognition and eventual acceptance of a bloc's political agenda. Protests where property damage or violence to persons are used, riots and street violence are examples of this.

I hope these definitions clear up any grey areas you might have with my earlier answer to your question.

Degree and frequency of use, not just the existence of the tactics of verbal and social violence and lawfare are the issues I have with the extremists on both ends of the political agenda. I have no problem with a bloc organising a peaceful boycott to bring about the political changes they wish to see. I do have a problem with folks intimmidating others to respect a boycott or blocking public infrastructure to enforce their boycott. Protests are fine. Violent protests and riots are not. Asking me to use certain pronouns or being offended if I don't are fine but compelling me to use novel pronouns under threat of professional dismissal or legal entanglement and sanction is unacceptable. So degree of intensity and frequency of use are the issues I have with the "fars" extremists.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

I mean, again, I don't find that these things are necessarily exclusive to political extremes, but I understand the gist of what you're saying post clarification though I find some of these definitions a bit dubious or too general for the meaning you wish to communicate (social violence seeming to involve literal physical violence for example, or verbal violence being specifically intimidation, though the demonization you mentioned is more reasonable; and also exceedingly universal).

That said, the crux of what I'm trying to determine was whether you're vilifying those who merely hold positions that deviate from your own, whether to the left or right, and that doesn't seem to be the case. Fortunately in Canada we don't really have notable and influential extremes that fit these definitions.

 

[OlNate]

I'm curious as to what you two consider to be the 'far left' and the 'far right'.

hehe...I bet you are, my fierce defender of the NDP friend....

For me, I'm talking more about methodology and partisanship than I am policy. I never fault people for having "extreme" ideas...I think the best ideas come from these pools. However, if one has bought into their ideology to the exclusion of all others, that person becomes dangerous, for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which being they miss out on good ideas, or good call outs, from people they have deemed to be "other". In fact, I would suggest the most dangerous Canadian is the one who would seek to establish an "other", no matter who that "other" may be. That's not what we're about politically (that qualification made to give a nod to our problematic racial issues in this country), and that's the kind of Americanization I'm most afraid of.

 

[OlNate]

Canadian trust in media is still at 52% (not great)

USA trust in media is at 32%. (absolutely horrible)

American media has totally lost it's way. Doesn't it seem strange to you that a American institution that was built on top of the 1st amendment, is the very institution that shits all over it by choosing favor over truth?

You're right. Please don't allow Canada to emulate any country...... and especially the USA.

hehe...those are some old numbers, my dude. Checked your stat, Canada now has 44% trust in media, while America has 29%. Would be interested to know what time period your data set was from, to understand the downward trend.

A part of the reason we see this dip in Canada is because a lot of our media comes from the states. We get CNN up here, we get a lot of your northern news. A lot of our media comes from the states, so both the trend in distrust in media and the weird behavior on the part of some of our fellow Canadians to try to emulate (usually the worst of) American political behavior stems from that. It's why you have so many highly opinionated Canadians weighing in on your political scene...hehe...

I really hope we remain Canadian...and I'm not the biggest nationalist, or American-style patriot in the world... This isn't a superiority thing, despite the way I sometimes act in debate forums...

Canada has a bit of a unique trait that not many folks think about... We were not founded in violence. I need to be very careful how I explain this, because just like America, there was certainly violence against the folks who were here first. Canada's history with the Indigenous folks may not be as dramatic as America's, but it was just as shady, and in some case, like the residential schools, perhaps more heartbreaking, at different steps along the way. But most of the outright violence was long over by the time Canada separated from England and became it's own nation. It was founded upon commerce and cooperation, not revolution or war. I think that has imprinted itself on our culture, it's why we're known to be so annoyingly polite, why it's easy to apologize, to make things right. We never developed a culture where we felt the need to own guns to protect ourselves, we never needed to engage in colonial expansionism, or prove that we are the mightiest nation.

In my opinion, changing that would mean losing our identity...which, as a progressive, I wouldn't be so worried about, if I thought it represented a step forward. But while I love my American friends individually, the idea of Canada turning into the States would probably be on a similar level to me as watching America become Communist China to you. I don't think we're better than anyone....but there's no one else I would want to be...if that makes sense.

 

[Surrealistik]

Canadian trust in media is still at 52% (not great)

USA trust in media is at 32%. (absolutely horrible)

American media has totally lost it's way. Doesn't it seem strange to you that a American institution that was built on top of the 1st amendment, is the very institution that shits all over it by choosing favor over truth?

You're right. Please don't allow Canada to emulate any country...... and especially the USA.

I mean, some of that mistrust is certainly deserved, given that yes, broad swathes of the mainstream media has obvious political skews and biases, even if they're not quite at the level of straight-up propaganda like in the case of Fox News.

The worst thing about Trump's claims of 'fake news' is that there is a shade of truth to them due to the way such media outlets present (or don't present, through lies of omission or selective deemphasis) the news.

 

[rjay]

We need a triple-e senate. All of Canada is ruled by 2 provinces that don't give a damn for the rest of us.

I would agree with that if we agree that the Senate has no political parties. Senators run on their own individual platforms. They articulate what policies they support and what policies they will not support.
The job of a Senator will be to
1. Seek out consensus regarding proposed legislation.
2. Propose changes to legislation with that goal of strengthening the goals of the legislation and reducing unintended consequences.

In other words the Senate will provide true sober second thought

 

[DiAnna]

You need to be less aggressive, militarily. Don't think we haven't seen you eyeballing our potato mines in Idaho. Do not assume even for an instant that we haven't noticed that 8 out of 10 Canadians live within 100 miles of America. Around here, we call that "massing on the border." Do not imagine that we haven't seen the truth behind poutine AND Tim Horton's, which is to say ways of normalizing creeping Canadianism. We have not forgotten The War of the Pig, or that mess in 1812 when Laura Secord led your barbarian hordes out of Ontario in an unprovoked attack on our peace-loving peoples.

I have heard the arguments about that last one, how "Canada didn't even exist in 1812," but you and I both know that's a bunch of crap. Canada didn't just appear in 1867. It was there for at least 100 years before that, otherwise all the French people living there would have drowned.

You guys are getting awfully lippy for a former iron curtain nation. You don't have Kruschev to bail you out anymore. Watch your step, eh.

OMG, I haven't laughed that hard in months! Good job, lol. *fist-bump*

 

[Antiwar]

Canada needs to become America. All ten provinces become states.

We'll tell the indians to stfu.

Roddy was way too polite in response to your comment. Don't reply unless it's to apologize.