As always, remember that an election is just an election. It has real implications, but party politics is the tip of the iceberg. If you want real change, there is a lot of organizing and work to be done outside the party politics system.
I am relieved the conservatives didn’t win.
It is impressive that after Trudeau’s last long stretch: India, buying a pipeline, SNC-Lavalin, firing the first Indigenous justice minister, brown face, black face, that he actually was able to stay prime minister. That says something either about the status of the liberals in Canada, or the abilities of his team, or how truly awful the Scheer conservatives are.
We should be VERY concerned about the foreign money and fossil fuel lobby money behind right wing propaganda campaigns: pictures, rumour bombs, memes, hashtags, and bots.
No party had a serious plan for decarbonization. WE SHOULD BE VERY CONCERNED.
Alberta’s “alienation” is a complex phenomenon: it is a historically conservative province. On that level, I don’t know what to do about that. People are going to vote for values I find abhorrent. But: Alberta is also at the very centre of Canada’s petroleum economy and the reason the Canadian dollar is essentially a petrocurrency. I am not one for appeasing conservatives, but any serious decarbonization policy also needs something that can be pitched to people who work in and benefit from the industry. I don’t mean the rich: I mean the people who actually do the work of extraction. Retraining, using their skills for renewable energy, anything that make sense. I do get being scared about losing your job in the current economy. Scheer’s climate change denial resonates as a jobs program. So, there should be an alternative jobs program.
Jagmeet Singh was great and should stay on as NDP leader. But the NDP needs a more concrete plan if they want to retake seats in Quebec, or build a base elsewhere and they need to do better on climate change.
