Older Canadians seem to be taking joy in sticking up their elbows and robbing younger Canadians of opportunities, jobs, and hope. It’s quite literally un-Canadian, but the Boomers have always been a generation apart and this is merely the latest manifestation of their self-centred worldview. Alexander Brown wonders if this divide can be fixed before the country itself is ruined:
“eLbOwS uP!”
“Talk to your parents,” the host of an event for Pierre Poilievre joked on Saturday in Vancouver — an event I happened to attend. “But be patient. Be kind.” And he’s right.
The cross-talk, the rock’em sock’em robots, the continued slap-fight between warring consultant tribes, it isn’t getting us anywhere, clearly. When the present iteration of the party of the status quo wedges a nation against itself, and denies a reform election after a decade of haphazard redistribution, non-growth, and abject decline, you get a traditional voter-demographic breakdown flipped entirely on its head.
The party of seemingly endless opposition dominated with youth, held strong with the 35-54s, but found itself walloped 52% to 34% among those aged 55+. Since then, those 55+ numbers have only widened, as the “safe” choice, that more stately actor (when he’s not radicalizing those who don’t know any better with claims of false invasion) can do little wrong, even coming out of “middling” budget heading to a vote Monday, and with a nation remaining pessimistic about its future prospects.
If the Liberals are voted down Monday, they would likely relish that opportunity to seize on a majority. The spin is already built in.
The Conservatives don’t want to stand up against Trump!
At a time like this, when we should be coming together, it’s un-Canadian …
We’re supposed to be one Team Canada right now (offer void in British Columbia, Ontario, and Quebec), we can’t afford Pierre Poilievre’s divisive Trumpiness.
On and on. Yada and yada.
Nowhere in that comms exercise, drummed up by those who spend more time in America or the Arab Emirates, or meeting with Chinese proxies than they’d publicly care to admit, would there be a defence of younger Canadians, of those still on the launch pad, worried about, say, supposed ‘fixes’ to immigration riddled with creative accounting and more of the same.
Nowhere would they address housing, set to get much, much worse, under both the federal Liberals and targets they’re admitting they won’t come close to hitting, and Ontario’s ‘Conservative’ premier who leads the galaxy in not getting off his ass to get out of the way on starts and lowering punitive development costs.
Nowhere would one find a stout defence against “deconstruction“, or the daily humiliation ritual of flags flying that aren’t our own, or imagined and inflated woke excess meant to sully the memory of our war dead and marginalize normal people.
Following recent debates sparked by Without Diminishment, where we’ve argued a version of “it’s not just the economy, stupid,” when it comes to what’s animating young people and young conservatives — actually talk to them, and half of them are trending towards fascism with how alienated they feel by a lack of upward social mobility, or a society without rules or those willing to enforce them — it’s been easier for some serving in established camps to mischaracterize these conversations as focusing too much on culture, or, ridiculously, “blood and soil nationalism”. But we’re not. If one is dealing in good faith, it’s plain to see we’re trying to talk about both.
Of course, the Liberals survived Monday’s budget vote … for now:
When I saw Elizabeth May stand up and ask Mark Carney what looks like a completely planted question, I assumed the budget would pass and I was correct. Planted questions normally come from government MPs and are a soft way for the government to push their agenda.
This time, it wasn’t a Liberal MP, well at least not a Liberal MP in name and fact. Instead it was Green leader, or deputy leader, or let’s be honest the lonely lady in the corner who is the only Green MP asking the question.
That statement put the Liberals one vote closer to passing their budget and of course May later confirmed ahead of the vote that she would back the budget. This was after saying couldn’t back the budget, might back the budget, would probably back the budget, definitely wouldn’t back the budget and finally would back the budget.
How anyone can take Elizabeth May seriously is beyond me.
How the other votes went…
Ahead of the vote there were lots of questions about how things would go. Would all MPs show up or be able to vote online? Would people abstain? Would MPs vote for the budget without crossing the floor?
In the end, the budget passed 170 to 168 with two NDPers abstaining. That leaves five votes not accounted for and we will figure out.
Here is how the vote went.
Now, some members who were not in their seats did vote electronically. I didn’t see Matt Jeneroux vote electronically and I’m told that he is in British Columbia with is family. Also not voting, Conservative MP Shannon Stubbs.
Conservatives Andrew Scheer and Scott Reid both voted no but only in the time that is allowed for MPs voted electronically to claim tech problems. They were both in the House, so why were didn’t they vote in person?
Regardless, the NDP rushed out to say they voted against the budget but also made sure that it passed with their two abstensions.
As for all this talk of a Christmas election, had the government lost this vote and the PM gone to see the Governor General tomorrow, the earliest election date would have been December 25.
A Christmas election.
