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YMS's avatar

I’m glad someone finally brought up the bullshit line the media keeps repeating about Carney “suspending his campaign” to return to Ottawa and play PM. Just like Trudeau, this is the role he thinks he was born to play and it should be handed to him on a silver platter. The fact Canadians seem willing to forget the last 10 years and give the libs another mandate baffles me but I’m just a lone voice in the western Canada wilderness. I’m afraid the election results will be announced before my voice reaches Ontario.

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KRM's avatar

We've replaced one actor with another.

In 2015 we desperately wanted our own Obama - a young cool and progressive leader who was great at speaking and seen as inspiring, to lead us from our place of boring comfort and stability to somewhere we could feel even better about ourselves.

When that trend died out and the world got darker and scarier, we want someone who looks accomplished, experienced, distinguished and reserved, someone who projects stability and level-headedness. Perhaps our own Joe Biden (before the dementia).

But Canadians can't evaluate below the superficial to see that both men are basically figureheads for the same ruling party apparatus, will have substantially the same policies, and the same problems will persist. But in 4 or 8 years when Carney's acting skills fall out of fashion, the same voters will gravitate to the next costumed avatar of the zeitgeist pushed their way.

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YMS's avatar

I would settle for boring and competent, unfortunately, in Carney, we have boring and an environmental zealot… not what this depressed country needs. We need capable and confident leadership who can bring Canada back to prosperity, not to its knees.

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KRM's avatar
Apr 6Edited

I'd be a lot more hopeful about Mark Carney if he booted Katie Telford and Gerry Butts and refused to sign nomination papers for about 40 of the lowest performing MP's including high-profile ones. Instead he only punted Boissonault (obvious liability) and Arya (disloyal for running against him without permission). Promoting Guilbault and letting gun ban extremist Natalie Provost run in a safe seat are fucking terrifying moves.

The fact that he can run as a "change" candidate with basically the exact same team as Trudeau means that Canadians are simply beyond stupid.

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Andrew Gorman's avatar

> and refused to sign nomination papers for about 40 of the lowest performing MP's including high-profile ones

I would be VERY concerned if he did that considering the length of the campaign. Do that on the available time frame and you can't do due-dilligence. Skip that step and that's you're almost asking to have candidates pushed by the Chinese government or with anti-jewish beliefs or just plain old terrible.

For better or for worse, Mr. Carney effectively has to run on "same team as before, but I'm a better leader".

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JP's avatar

Hey guys, to echo a comment someone made last week, for future panel posts could you put the full names and partisan affiliations of person currently writing?

I don't know these people from Adam and I keep getting confused as to which one is which and having to scroll back up.

Just an idea.

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SimulatedKnave's avatar

Honestly, I find it refreshing to have our political leader admit that yeah, he doesn't do his own grocery shopping any more. Because duh. This country has needed doses of reality for some time, and people freaking about one as tiny of that is not a good sign.

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Kristie Loo's avatar

He could have said, “in our household, we’ve decided to buy Canadian and so we’re either buying Canadian or doing without”. You don’t have to literally be picking up the berries yourself at Loblaws, you can be speaking to the everyday purchase decisions your household is making. The fact he couldn’t think this way boggle my mind. Sometime he answers like one of those robots that can only answer a question literally.

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John Bower's avatar

So, we should keep Carney away from questions because he so often looks panicked and confused but he is SUPPOSED to answer questions that come from left field in order to show us (you know, the voters and taxpayers) how he would react in real life. He can't answer a straight forward soft ball about buying strawberries. I buy the groceries in our house and my better half would simply say 'ask John'. Carney couldn't even come up with that in the moment??????

Can we also all agree that the Main Stream media (MSM) is allowing the election to be about the President to the exclusion of most other issues please? Tariffs are an issue in some industries and we will struggle as a country for a bit but putting on revenge tariffs to show how tough we are is just not going to work AND IT ONLY HURTS OUR CONSUMERS!!! Carney gets credit for being tough yet reasonable for hurting Canadians - who dreamed up that response?

I cannot believe I'm saying this again but ... who are these folks who actually believe that Carney and the LPC have renounced the last ten years of policy on almost everything and that Carney has done a 180 from his 'environmental Jesus' life and that we will now have pipelines, electricity, Canadian built cars (whatever those are), a new military, more handouts to industry and individuals, tax cuts, a chicken in every pot and that it won't cost us an extra cent in taxes? Unfrigginbelievable folks yet there seem to be a lot of them out there!

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John Ormston's avatar

To Kim Wright - the fact that you can even attempt to say that the press should have paid more attention to Jagmeet's policy announcements is a joke. The leader of the NDP is making videos with a porn star on the NDP bus and he had been communicating with her for some time before the writ dropped!! You don't have to be the leader of a Federal party in the middle of an election to know that might not be a good idea and perhaps might overshadow what you are saying about policy (who could possibly be advising him?). But to your point, given all the perverts that subscribe to Only Fans and masturbate as well, maybe that is what he has decided to do - go after the 'porn vote'. When you are at 6% in the polls why not try something different and attempt to sway all the voters that masturbate? The fact that he has been communicating with her pre-writ is something between him and his wife. I have no issue with Only Fans, but I wouldn't invite one of the performers to do a presentation at my work place. If PP did this the MSM would have put him at the bottom of Lake Ontario by now.

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Bree L Cropper's avatar

So apparently the NDP has been hosting an online zoom series called “Creators for Jagmeet” for the past year where they’ve networked multiple different Canadian Content Creators (from multiple platforms - utube, Facebook, TikTok, etc) to utilize in this election presumably as “grassroots” style advertising.

I follow someone on Facebook called British Columbia Mom who’s been ranting all this weekend that the NDP is throwing all of the Creators under the bus by dropping this Only Fans person; that the NDP was more concerned with having a massive quantity of creators as supporting troups than vetting them individually for quality, background, flaws, etc. So, likely stay tuned for more of same same from them in upcoming days/weeks.

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Marcel's avatar

I'm a bit confused with the Anti-Panel posts. Are they transcripts from videos/podcasts? Or are they their own thing and not based on content from other channels?

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Matt Gurney's avatar

These are written.

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B–'s avatar

Thanks for clarifying, Matt. I too was confused and thought I was missing the video. BTW I have a suggestion. Because you've increased your online presence, I see clips everywhere (yay!). But I never really know if I've already watched or listened to them. Is it possible to put the date somewhere where it's easily visible? In a perfect world, the date would be obvious in the platform, but alas, that's not always the case, especially with instagram, which randomly just appears. Just a thought. If it's too much trouble, don't worry about it :-)

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Robert Nash's avatar

Please tell us how many Canadian-made cars sold in America and American-made cars sold in Canada are NOT CUSMA/USMCA compliant. The auto tariffs are starting to look performative and smell like bullshit.

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Brian's avatar

On Amanda being "sick" of people blaming everything on Jenni... I'd have more sympathy with that position if Jenni didn't spend so much time making it about herself (e.g. the Macleans article, the O'Toole tweet). I don't get the impression Anne McGrath spends nearly as much time worrying about her public branding.

Of course, arguing about Jenni's effectiveness is pointless now since Pierre is apparently sticking with her, which I assume was the point of last week's "insider" leaking. Voters will deliver the only verdict that matters on her (and Pierre's) campaign in just 22 days.

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Michael Edwards's avatar

The current noise and hysteria in the media and in my daily life has become so poorly focused and confused that I am convinced we are in an actual crisis and are responding as humans usually do in a crisis. "When in trouble, when in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout." We desperately need that most unusual of humans: one who when surrounded by chaos and fear can keep their head.

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KRM's avatar

Avoid both Twitter/Reddit and TV news. The former are flooded with bots and the latter might as well be run by them.

If you go outside and look around, things are remarkably normal. The tariffs aren't a big deal except for those in a few specific industries. The stock market was overvalued anyway and investors need to steel themselves for unexpected events or they end up selling low and buying high. It's pretty clear by now that Trump really was joking about annexing Canada, and not like he could ever have actually done it.

We are mostly in a manufactured crisis designed to keep incumbents in power despite their overwhelming flaws and preserve the subsidies for our media outlets.

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Tom Steadman's avatar

Suffering from politics overload. Will check in with the Line after April is done.

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Kevan's avatar

IDOLIZING A POLITICIAN

IS LIKE BELIEVING THE STRIPPER REALLY LIKES YOU

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ericanadian's avatar

For Poillievre, maybe it could alienate some of his base to attack Trump, but it should be pretty easy for him to go after one of the guys in Trump’s ear pushing tariffs, whether you believe that to be Lutnick or Navarro. Most Canadian Trump supporters aren’t going to know who they are enough to be bothered by such a move and Trump doesn’t seem to really care about people trashing his cronies. Easy money.

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Bree L Cropper's avatar

I really enjoyed listening to the last Anti-Panel, will this be posted as a podcast later today? I can only read so much this election period vs listening while I get stuff done (4 kids here). Thank you!

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Matt Gurney's avatar

Regular panels are written only.

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Bree L Cropper's avatar

K, thanks!

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HS's avatar

If you read the post, you'll probably be happy your kids weren't listening to it with you as the time it would take to explain new and interesting words could far outweigh the 5 minutes it takes to skim a post like this.

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Bree L Cropper's avatar

Hah! Fair enough (I like to listen to the Line while making breakfast, kiddos thoroughly engrossed with Saturday morning cartoons). Will have a read later this afternoon when I’m standing in line for Pierre’s Okanagan rally here, beauty day for it - 17* and gorgeous!

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Eric Shields's avatar

PP comes with 2 big negatives. Somehow he is unappealing to many women. Secondly he has the MAGA anchor dragging him down. Having his wife campaign with him is a huge plus. She is articulate, smart and multilingual. That may help the first negative. The MAGA people must now be down to hardcore followers. How you neutralize them is a tough one.

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B–'s avatar

Liberal women hate any Conservative leader. It's not a PP problem. Ditto MAGA. The left like making the Conservatives out to be scary. "The bogeyman to the right" has always been a winning campaign strategy for them. I agree with you that there's an image problem, but the people who buy into those two things aren't going to vote Conservative regardless.

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Tamara's avatar

Completely agree. You just have to ask one of those women, as i do regularly when faced with them, what is it about Pierre you don't like? The only answer I get back is "I don't know, I just don't like him". Never a concrete answer comes from lefty females

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KRM's avatar

Ask them what policies they object to and you get some real incoherence, or it devolves into conspiracy theories about a top secret plant to ban abortion.

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B–'s avatar

Yup, and decades ago, around Chretien/Martin, it was "better to go with the devil you know." Honestly, they aren't serious people so I don't take them seriously. A bit irked that they vote though haha

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KRM's avatar

And in the last 10 years social media has dramatically raised the intelligence and effort required to be able to cut through the BS and vote based on anything other than tribalism and vibes.

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kaycee's avatar

I'm not a 'liberal woman', but as a woman (period), here's my objection to Poilievre based on years of reading/watching news reports. He comes across as smarmy, nasty & condescending to anyone who doesn't agree with him. And I won't vote for any politician who projects that image nor will I vote for the party who has a leader projecting that image.

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Janet Giles's avatar

"those women"

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B–'s avatar

You have a preferred demonstrative adjective and noun?

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Milo Hrnić's avatar

I honestly think it comes down to Pierre's looks and demeanor. He doesn't look or act like a Prime Minister in a movie.

Women in Canada, results have shown, tend to vote with gut and heart taken into consideration. More so than men, or else we would have had this election be Melanie Joly vs Raquel Dancho.

Unfortunately the Conservatives are going to have to take look and feel into account when selecting leaders in the future.

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B–'s avatar

Well, as a Canadian woman, I have to say that’s the absolute last thing I consider. But I do know many who vote based on looks.

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Bree L Cropper's avatar

Hmm, might be an age thing? My aunt (65+) voted for Trudeau repeatedly because she really liked his hair…whereas my uncle voted for anyone else he could because he really didn’t like Trudeau’s hair (or that my aunt liked his hair).

As a woman (far) under 60, personally I’m voting based on tax policies and economic growth in Canada’s resource sectors. But there is, if I’m being totally honest, a smidge of emotional appeal in the PM candidate that has a beautiful family with adorable young children and an intelligent wife he obviously values and highlights at all events - I suppose I find intact, healthy families super admirable as an social ethic (thus influencing my vote).

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