The Beast and the Smiler
Oct. 20th, 2015 05:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyI've seen a number of images and video on the theme of last night's election, but there's only one image—though it has failed to gain the traction that shirtless!Trudeau has managed—that can adequately sum up how I feel about the results.
That's from the cyberpunk masterpiece Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis, and if you haven't read it, what are you doing reading my blog? This comic is so much better, and astonishingly prescient. In my favourite arc, the current President, known only as The Beast (even to his children) is challenged by a telegenic, liberal-seeming politician nicknamed The Smiler. At first, Spider Jerusalem, our cynical journalist hero who is in no way Hunter S. Thompson, grudgingly admires him—insofar as he can admire any politician—until he discovers that while The Beast, who is in no way Richard Nixon, is an authoritarian monster, the Smiler, who is in no way Tony Blair, is hiding something much worse.
I don't need to tell you what happens next. You've read a dystopian book or two.
I swear, if I see one more "congratulations Canada!" post, I am going to fucking hurl. It's bad from Americans, as you guys don't really understand our political system or major parties, but it's worse from Canadians, who don't understand our political system or major parties. While I'm as happy as anyone to not have to use this icon anymore—
(You get to see it one more time though. Sorry.)
—there is no cause for celebration. And here's why.
Justin Trudeau is indistinguishable from Harper on most things that count, except scarier because no one seems to understand this.
I would ask all Canadians who "voted strategically"* or caught themselves saying "anyone but Harper" to ask themselves why they hate Harper.
Is it because his economic policies favour the rich at the expense of the poor? From a friend's post (since I'm too exhausted to dig up more authoritative sources, but trust me, this is the Liberal fiscal plan):
Okay, math is hard. How about the environment? Trudeau's not quite so bad there, but he supports the Keystone XL pipeline and I'll bet you anything he flips on the other two.
Do you like jobs? Freedom of speech and privacy on the intertubes? Transparency when it comes to trade deals with other countries? Well, Harper negotiated that stuff away in secret with the TPP, but fortunately there's Wikileaks and come on people, if it were a good deal for Canada, they'd have told us what was in it. Instead, the Conservatives held out spilling details before the election, so everyone who doesn't keep up with trade deal acronyms was left in the dark as to how hard we'd get reamed.**
Trudeau doesn't know what's in it. But he's for it.
Most important to me personally, though, is the Harper government's attacks on our civil liberties. That would be Bill C-24, which takes the unprecedented step of allowing the government to strip the citizenship of any Canadian who is eligible for dual citizenship. This includes me, if you were wondering. If someone decides I'm a terrorist (more on that in a sec), I can be deported to Israel. Imagine. The Liberals supported the bill.
Even worse is Bill C-51, which is a mass surveillance, thought crime, and arbitrary arrest bill, loosely defining terrorism as "whatever we don't like," the sort of thing that they used to write dystopian literature about before dystopian literature became a manual for policy writing. The Liberals voted for that one, too. Except Trudeau; he didn't think the skullfucking of our most basic human rights was worth showing up to vote on.
Now, the one nice thing I can say about Liberals is that I appreciate their ideology. They have none. They crave power, and only power; their sole political aim is to get elected and stay there. This is kind of cool because it means that they're by and large not bigots. One voter-unit is the same as the next, and they don't care what your gender or sexual orientation or ethnicity is. So things, in the short-term, might suck slightly less for the Muslims who are getting assaulted on our streets by Harper brownshirts.
Oh, but shit, yo, Trudeau also voted for Bill S-7, the—I'm not fucking making this up—"Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act," which makes things that were already illegal more illegal if you do them while brown. So while I don't think the Liberals are racist for ideological reasons the way the Tories are, they'll be racist if it'll make them popular. And as the whole niqab debacle and the aforementioned brownshirts illustrate, Canadians are pretty fucking racist.
So tell me why I should be happy today. Other than that my inevitable "Prince Justin is a Twat" icon is going to be nicer to look at than my Harper "Fuck the People" icon. Seriously.
The other bad news is that the Liberals' gains come mostly at the expense, not of the Tories, but of the NDP, who while far from being proper socialists, at least voted against all of the shitty things I just mentioned. We lost a bunch of really great MPs to strategic voting. Just to give one example, Dan Harris in Scarborough Southwest, a hardworking progressive who is just a wonderful guy, lost to Bill Blair, former Chief Pig, who supports carding despite the fact that it's racist and doesn't work, and who presided over the vicious police state that Toronto became during the G20. Or awesome Olivia Chow losing to career sleazebag Adam Vaughan. Or punk-rock-as-fuck Andrew Cash losing to "who the fuck is she?" Julie Dzerowicz. (Seriously, what does "held senior leadership roles in the private and public sector" mean?) Or, in the campaign I worked on, Matthew Kellway, who lost to some guy who no one knows anything about except that the name "Trudeau" was on his sign. (Note to my countrymen—we vote for MPs, not the fucking president; learn what your MP stands for and don't just vote based on the party leader.)
Now, I don't even say this as an NDP ideologue, because I'm not one. I only joined the NDP very briefly, to try to keep Mulcair from winning the leadership after Layton's death, and left when they took the word "socialism" out of the party platform. I volunteered with Kellway's campaign out of outrage over Bill C-51 and support for the only political party that had convictions and a commitment to democracy. I'm glad I did, exhausting and depressing as it was. I'm hoping that this defeat leads to a reexamination of the NDP's Blairite direction, perhaps even an exodus of the rightward elements like we've seen in the UK. One hopes the correct lessons have been learned.
In any event, I was despairing last night, as Canada swapped a kitten-eating robot for a born-to-rule pretty boy with more or less the same political leanings but better hair, and backslapped and rejoiced and called it "change." I felt a little less despairing when I woke up and remembered:
1) This is basically the political configuration of my youth, with a Liberal majority, a Tory opposition, and the NDP snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. (The Orange Crush in the last election was an aberration based on Quebec's weirdness and Layton's charisma; the NDP should never have expected to build on Quebec as a base.)
2) Electoral politics has never been the main thing that I do; among other reasons, I'm far to the left of anyone electable.
3) As someone who writes a lot of dystopian fiction, I would be at a loss for inspiration if I ever actually liked the government in power.
4) Having canvassed once or twice a week, every week, for almost three months, my ass is looking really fine.
Sadly, though, Canadian media has no one like Spider Jerusalem to expose the truth, and those of us who value silly little things like freedom and democracy are left to muddle through as best we can. I hope we can rebuild from this, but it's easier to take rights away than it is to gain them, and there's more work to do with a populace that thinks it's free than one that knows it isn't. We must be at once—and I hope the NDP understands this, because historically it hasn't—both principled and ruthless.
Good riddance, Beast, and welcome Smiler, and the rest of you can hold your fucking congratulations until you see what he has in store.
* Note, remember next time that anyone who tells you to "vote strategically" is telling you to support the Liberals. The NDP were winning at the outset.
** I'd say they deserved it for not educating themselves, but I have to live with the results of their ignorance.
ETA: The Beaverton, as usual, has the best coverage: Nation groggily wakes up next to Justin Trudeau:
That's from the cyberpunk masterpiece Transmetropolitan by Warren Ellis, and if you haven't read it, what are you doing reading my blog? This comic is so much better, and astonishingly prescient. In my favourite arc, the current President, known only as The Beast (even to his children) is challenged by a telegenic, liberal-seeming politician nicknamed The Smiler. At first, Spider Jerusalem, our cynical journalist hero who is in no way Hunter S. Thompson, grudgingly admires him—insofar as he can admire any politician—until he discovers that while The Beast, who is in no way Richard Nixon, is an authoritarian monster, the Smiler, who is in no way Tony Blair, is hiding something much worse.
I don't need to tell you what happens next. You've read a dystopian book or two.
I swear, if I see one more "congratulations Canada!" post, I am going to fucking hurl. It's bad from Americans, as you guys don't really understand our political system or major parties, but it's worse from Canadians, who don't understand our political system or major parties. While I'm as happy as anyone to not have to use this icon anymore—
(You get to see it one more time though. Sorry.)
—there is no cause for celebration. And here's why.
Justin Trudeau is indistinguishable from Harper on most things that count, except scarier because no one seems to understand this.
I would ask all Canadians who "voted strategically"* or caught themselves saying "anyone but Harper" to ask themselves why they hate Harper.
Is it because his economic policies favour the rich at the expense of the poor? From a friend's post (since I'm too exhausted to dig up more authoritative sources, but trust me, this is the Liberal fiscal plan):
1) A tax increase on the rich 1%, in order to give the upper 50% a tax cut. People making over 100k, but less than 200k will be looking at a tax cut amounting to $600. Those who make 50k a year will get $80 dollars, those below $45k get nothing.
2) GST cuts for land developers who build "for profit" rental housing -- make a profit, get a tax cut plan. Mike Harris tried, and failed to promote affordable housing using "tax incentives", and the Liberal plan will also fail.
3) Cuts to EI payroll tax, further reducing available funds available for unemployed workers. In the 70s, 70% of the unemployed were serviced through EI (UIC), today only 30%. The Liberal plan continues this trajectory.
4) Expansion of the "baby-bonus" system instituted in 2006 by Harper in place of a daycare plan. Extremely wasteful use of government money.
Okay, math is hard. How about the environment? Trudeau's not quite so bad there, but he supports the Keystone XL pipeline and I'll bet you anything he flips on the other two.
Do you like jobs? Freedom of speech and privacy on the intertubes? Transparency when it comes to trade deals with other countries? Well, Harper negotiated that stuff away in secret with the TPP, but fortunately there's Wikileaks and come on people, if it were a good deal for Canada, they'd have told us what was in it. Instead, the Conservatives held out spilling details before the election, so everyone who doesn't keep up with trade deal acronyms was left in the dark as to how hard we'd get reamed.**
Trudeau doesn't know what's in it. But he's for it.
Most important to me personally, though, is the Harper government's attacks on our civil liberties. That would be Bill C-24, which takes the unprecedented step of allowing the government to strip the citizenship of any Canadian who is eligible for dual citizenship. This includes me, if you were wondering. If someone decides I'm a terrorist (more on that in a sec), I can be deported to Israel. Imagine. The Liberals supported the bill.
Even worse is Bill C-51, which is a mass surveillance, thought crime, and arbitrary arrest bill, loosely defining terrorism as "whatever we don't like," the sort of thing that they used to write dystopian literature about before dystopian literature became a manual for policy writing. The Liberals voted for that one, too. Except Trudeau; he didn't think the skullfucking of our most basic human rights was worth showing up to vote on.
Now, the one nice thing I can say about Liberals is that I appreciate their ideology. They have none. They crave power, and only power; their sole political aim is to get elected and stay there. This is kind of cool because it means that they're by and large not bigots. One voter-unit is the same as the next, and they don't care what your gender or sexual orientation or ethnicity is. So things, in the short-term, might suck slightly less for the Muslims who are getting assaulted on our streets by Harper brownshirts.
Oh, but shit, yo, Trudeau also voted for Bill S-7, the—I'm not fucking making this up—"Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act," which makes things that were already illegal more illegal if you do them while brown. So while I don't think the Liberals are racist for ideological reasons the way the Tories are, they'll be racist if it'll make them popular. And as the whole niqab debacle and the aforementioned brownshirts illustrate, Canadians are pretty fucking racist.
So tell me why I should be happy today. Other than that my inevitable "Prince Justin is a Twat" icon is going to be nicer to look at than my Harper "Fuck the People" icon. Seriously.
The other bad news is that the Liberals' gains come mostly at the expense, not of the Tories, but of the NDP, who while far from being proper socialists, at least voted against all of the shitty things I just mentioned. We lost a bunch of really great MPs to strategic voting. Just to give one example, Dan Harris in Scarborough Southwest, a hardworking progressive who is just a wonderful guy, lost to Bill Blair, former Chief Pig, who supports carding despite the fact that it's racist and doesn't work, and who presided over the vicious police state that Toronto became during the G20. Or awesome Olivia Chow losing to career sleazebag Adam Vaughan. Or punk-rock-as-fuck Andrew Cash losing to "who the fuck is she?" Julie Dzerowicz. (Seriously, what does "held senior leadership roles in the private and public sector" mean?) Or, in the campaign I worked on, Matthew Kellway, who lost to some guy who no one knows anything about except that the name "Trudeau" was on his sign. (Note to my countrymen—we vote for MPs, not the fucking president; learn what your MP stands for and don't just vote based on the party leader.)
Now, I don't even say this as an NDP ideologue, because I'm not one. I only joined the NDP very briefly, to try to keep Mulcair from winning the leadership after Layton's death, and left when they took the word "socialism" out of the party platform. I volunteered with Kellway's campaign out of outrage over Bill C-51 and support for the only political party that had convictions and a commitment to democracy. I'm glad I did, exhausting and depressing as it was. I'm hoping that this defeat leads to a reexamination of the NDP's Blairite direction, perhaps even an exodus of the rightward elements like we've seen in the UK. One hopes the correct lessons have been learned.
In any event, I was despairing last night, as Canada swapped a kitten-eating robot for a born-to-rule pretty boy with more or less the same political leanings but better hair, and backslapped and rejoiced and called it "change." I felt a little less despairing when I woke up and remembered:
1) This is basically the political configuration of my youth, with a Liberal majority, a Tory opposition, and the NDP snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. (The Orange Crush in the last election was an aberration based on Quebec's weirdness and Layton's charisma; the NDP should never have expected to build on Quebec as a base.)
2) Electoral politics has never been the main thing that I do; among other reasons, I'm far to the left of anyone electable.
3) As someone who writes a lot of dystopian fiction, I would be at a loss for inspiration if I ever actually liked the government in power.
4) Having canvassed once or twice a week, every week, for almost three months, my ass is looking really fine.
Sadly, though, Canadian media has no one like Spider Jerusalem to expose the truth, and those of us who value silly little things like freedom and democracy are left to muddle through as best we can. I hope we can rebuild from this, but it's easier to take rights away than it is to gain them, and there's more work to do with a populace that thinks it's free than one that knows it isn't. We must be at once—and I hope the NDP understands this, because historically it hasn't—both principled and ruthless.
Good riddance, Beast, and welcome Smiler, and the rest of you can hold your fucking congratulations until you see what he has in store.
* Note, remember next time that anyone who tells you to "vote strategically" is telling you to support the Liberals. The NDP were winning at the outset.
** I'd say they deserved it for not educating themselves, but I have to live with the results of their ignorance.
ETA: The Beaverton, as usual, has the best coverage: Nation groggily wakes up next to Justin Trudeau:
“Really, the C-51 guy? The guy who’s friends with Bill Blair?” said New Zealand, over Snapchat. “Tell me he at least doesn’t have a douchey native-inspired tattoo.”
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2015-10-20 11:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-20 11:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2015-10-21 12:34 am (UTC)THIS. 100% I get so incredibly frustrated by this spin (which it seems the Liberals ALWAYS pull out when they are lagging). And it doesn't need to be this way because if Alberta can go NDP majority (albeit provincially), then Canada could do the same.
Oh my.
Also - hey! You're Canadian. Me too. :)
no subject
Date: 2015-10-21 12:42 am (UTC)If everyone who voted strategically voted their conscience, the strategic vote would be for the party with the most in the way of a conscience.
And yes! I am Canadian, at least until they round me up under Bill C-24 and deport me to a country I've never set foot in.
(no subject)
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Date: 2015-10-21 03:21 am (UTC)Why? This is a sincere question. If we had an American-style system where MPs could vote according to their conscience, then voting locally for a decent MP, even if you don't love everything about his or her party, makes sense. But every MP has to vote as a bloc in this country -- probably the single thing that I loathe the most about our system -- so your MP is in lockstep with the party leader no matter what you think of him or her personally. (Which is why majorities are so goddamn dangerous here, the weaponization of which Harper perfected into a fucking art form, as I don't need to tell you.) According to this article there have been less than a dozen free votes in parliament since the 70s, which is BATSHIT IMO but that's the way our parties have calcified. With apologies for linking to Macleans, this article is a pretty good summary of the way "conscience" has become some sort of weird shorthand for abortion and the death penalty; the author agrees with me that this is preposterous (like, executing one criminal is a matter of "conscience" but starting a war isn't?), but he falls on the side of "everything should be subject to party discipline" while I think things should move in the opposite direction.
tl;dr, if I'm understanding right, the issues that you and I are worried about w/r/t privacy and terrorism and whatnot are generally put to the whip, so the individuality of MPs is blunted and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. So yeah, I am aware that the party leader's name is not the one on my ballot, but I am having trouble seeing why the party leader is not the person I'm voting for, in the end.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-21 11:42 am (UTC)And I have a hard time, in particular, imagining Bill Blair in lockstep with anyone. Dude's a bully and Trudeau is going to have to be in lockstep with him.
In the case of Harper's government, I think one was definitely voting for Harper and not any local MP. I'm less sure about Trudeau, mainly because he has barely any political experience. He's going to have to listen to his cabinet, so it makes sense to pay attention to who will likely be in the cabinet *coughBillBlaircough*.
But yeah, the system sucks for, among other reasons, precisely the one you describe. That's among the reasons the NDP was foolish to build a base in Quebec with inexperienced MPs that had been elected solely because Quebecers were pissy this one time.
(no subject)
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Date: 2015-10-21 04:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-21 11:36 am (UTC)It might be a good thing if he actually delivers on the promises he's made—most importantly electoral reform––rather than governs as he has voted so far. However, I am inclined to go by a politician's prior voting record before empty rhetoric about hope and change (thanks a lot, Obama).
no subject
Date: 2015-10-21 12:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-21 08:57 pm (UTC)Andrew Cash lost to a complete unknown, which is almost worse.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-21 12:33 pm (UTC)I think it's also an opportunity for the NDP. The Quebec strategy was so fucking unrealistic I can't believe that anyone fell for it but they did. We have now had two elections; one federal, one Ontario, where the bankruptcy of trying to appeal to some phantom constituency has been exposed. maybe now we can get a leader who, if not as far to the left as you or I would wish, will at least come up with a platform that doesn't ignore everyone except loony Francophones and the inhabitants of Buttfuck Boondocks.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-21 09:06 pm (UTC)Quite true. We won't get Senate abolition either, and everyone will forget about electoral reform in three weeks.
It's odd, because foreign policy is important to me, and I don't think Trudeau's complete shit there (withdrawing from Iraq and Syria is entirely sensible), but out of the hundreds of doors I knocked on, I'd say maybe four people had any interest in foreign policy, and of those, three had opinions on foreign policy that were stupid.
What I see, though, is a depoliticization of discourse in favour of straightforward identity politics. Not that identity politics aren't important, because they absolutely are, but it's a move away from structural causes towards cosmetic fixes. It's easy to say "don't be a bigot"; much harder to explain to someone how the TPP works, or why mass surveillance and internet privacy are important.
Left-right distinctions are pretty meaningless to this generation—"liberal/progressive" means social progressive, "conservative" means social conservative, without any real understanding of economic theory. Which is probably why the NDP's fiscal policy has been so incoherent in the last few elections. But economics is the most important thing, and we're about to suffer massive, irreparable losses because the average Canadian can't get their head around how an economy works.
I think it's also an opportunity for the NDP. The Quebec strategy was so fucking unrealistic I can't believe that anyone fell for it but they did. We have now had two elections; one federal, one Ontario, where the bankruptcy of trying to appeal to some phantom constituency has been exposed. maybe now we can get a leader who, if not as far to the left as you or I would wish, will at least come up with a platform that doesn't ignore everyone except loony Francophones and the inhabitants of Buttfuck Boondocks.
As someone said on my FB, good thing that the NDP is so great at learning from its mistakes. :P
(no subject)
From: (Anonymous) - Date: 2015-10-21 09:19 pm (UTC) - Expand(no subject)
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Date: 2015-10-21 12:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-21 09:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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From:You may know this one by heart...
From:no subject
Date: 2015-10-21 03:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-21 09:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-21 05:04 pm (UTC)I just found out that Antony Green, Australia's election expert, is in Canada, giving lectures on how our preferential voting system works. His blog includes his coverage of the Canadian election.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-21 09:09 pm (UTC)Thanks for the link. I think your system is better than ours, but you had the onion-eater guy, so maybe not.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-21 05:14 pm (UTC)Yesterday's man, I think - he won't make a very good MP because who wants to stay on as a roustabout when you've been the ringmaster.
I foresee him leaving even that soon, for several lucrative directorships on oil company boards, a good pension, and quite likely some sham academic appointment at the University of Calgary.
Plus he'll have all the time he wants to write books about hockey.
Here's hoping the knives come out as they select a new leader.
I'm guessing Jason Kenney, at least at first.
But hopefully the CPC will shake to pieces under the stress of its own internal contradictions, set up by the Reform coup and later purges but held in place by the "sadistic Victorian schoolmaster" (cf. Conrad Black's editorial on Harper; when Lord Tubby of Crossharbour thinks ill of you, it's time to go).
The situation reminds me of Tito's Yugoslavia.
Anyway, it would be nice to see as much fragmentation on the Right as the Left.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-21 09:11 pm (UTC)Yep. It is known.
Plus he'll have all the time he wants to write books about hockey.
Oh man. That would be genuinely funny. By the way, do people read books about hockey or just buy them for relatives? I'm asking for a friend.
Anyway, it would be nice to see as much fragmentation on the Right as the Left.
Fuck, I hope so. Give us some time to regroup.
(no subject)
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Date: 2015-10-21 07:58 pm (UTC)Meanwhile, I take the liberty of congratulating you on yo' ass, ma.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-21 09:12 pm (UTC)My hair is much better, though, and my ass is great right now. Hopefully I can keep it that way now that the election is over.
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2015-10-21 09:00 pm (UTC)That is the main source of my optimism. If they can be convinced that the Canadian majority gives a shit about things like the environment and refugees, they will support those things because it wins them votes. Probably most Canadians don't care about those things, but they will often say they do in polls if they think that's the socially accepted thing to do.
Also, people are more likely to vote NDP in the next election if they don't think it's a choice between the Liberals and being marched off to the gulag.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-21 09:15 pm (UTC)Also, people are more likely to vote NDP in the next election if they don't think it's a choice between the Liberals and being marched off to the gulag.
This is true. I really hope that the NDP can use the next four or five years to get its shit together and present a clearly delineated alternative.
(no subject)
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From:no subject
Date: 2015-10-22 04:57 pm (UTC)http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=3670
no subject
Date: 2015-10-23 01:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-10-23 10:39 pm (UTC)Also sounds a very apt analogy, and I can certainly see the Blair-like aspects of Trudeau.
I think your analysis is sound, though I wonder if there are some positive aspects. (I see you've linked to a few possible ones subsequently over at the other place).
The one potential advantage of the unprincipled opportunist over the bigoted ideologue is that they might be swayable, if they can be convinced that is where their best interests lie.
Like, this C-51 review - I am sure that what Trudeau is hoping for is some tinkering round the edges that won't actually take away any of the nice new powers the state has over the citizenry. Like, this Parliamentary oversight - certainly necessary, but very easy to have something that looks good on paper but which actually just means the security services get a Parliamentary rubber stamp for pretty much everything they want to do, while the government can say "Aren't we good boys and girls, we have brought in Parliamentary oversight, unlike those horrible Tories".
But - the review creates another opportunity to mobilize, especially on some particular aspects of the bill which are a) the most egregious and b) ones where you can get public opinion on your side (if there are such), and so it may just be possible to win some small victories.
The deficit spending for infrastructure will also be positive if it goes ahead - certainly in Canada in terms of jobs, wages, and like actually having some infrastructure, but also internationally in that, if it is successful, it will provide a good example of a break with the ludicrous anti-deficit orthodoxy, and one that comes from a very respectable centrist government. Might make putting the case for this sort of thing politically easier.
Still: fundamentally, very depressing how people can so easily be taken in by the illusion of change.
no subject
Date: 2015-10-25 10:07 pm (UTC)No! He's supposed to look like Blair, but yeah. It's the hair I think.
I doubt anything good will come of the C-51 review. I've read some of the bill—I got the "implications for civil rights assuming you're not actually a terrorist" excerpts—and its strength is in its utter incomprehensibility. That works to the favour of any government seeking to maintain its power while waving around the illusion of oversight. Anyone capable of understanding the damned thing in the first place is likely not on our side.
And Canadians will forgive him because it's complicated and we don't like complicated. Look at the shiny.
I'm more optimistic about the deficit spending. It would have been impossible under a minority, but with a majority it might actually happen. It's the usual Liberal tactic of waving cash around but hell, people need it.