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2022 CPC Leadership Discussion: Et tu Redeux

What's to hmm about? People vote to bring benefits. More benefits. More votes.

Haven't seen many benefits from Ottawa in Alberta recently.
Fair enough. So mandates were not an issue then when it comes to Ford.
 
Indeed he has. I’m sure the strong Parliamentary majority he holds is some consolation. I don’t see Ford losing sleep over what the fringe to the outside right thinks.
He’s done a decent job of purging a few from the party.
 
He’s done a decent job of purging a few from the party.
He has. He’s done a pretty decent job of being seen to take his party and his job sufficiently seriously that he’s willing to do the housekeeping when needed. He won’t tolerate the wingnuts debasing the party. I didn’t vote for him, but I do respect that our differences on some key policies (bill 124 in particular for me) don’t mean he’s some kind of clown. He won the election fair and square by delivering an electable platform and not abjectly sucking at his job.
 
You can still get covid from someone who is fully vaccinated. I got it from someone who was triple vaccinated, and I am also triple vaccinated. There is even a higher possibility of someone vaccinated showing up to work with covid because they didn’t realize they had it/had extremely mild symptoms that were dismissed.

You could get the flu from a coworker and possibly die. You could get into a car accident on the way to work and possibly die. You could get a infected cut and possibly die. The world is full of ways to die. Being part of society means accepting risk. If you are so afraid of it, it means you should stay home, not forcing anyone else who may or may not have it to stay home.
And part of being an employer and a member of a civil society is to minimize risk to the extent that we reasonably can. It seem the 'reasonably can' part is what people diverge on.
 

What happens when you lock a generation of keen youngsters in their parents' basements and deny them hope for an independent future.


FIRST READING: Young people seem to be leaning Tory (possibly for the first time ever)​

Polls keep showing a plurality of under-30 voters backing the Conservatives

Author of the article:
Tristin Hopper
Publishing date:
Aug 10, 2022 • 5 hours ago • 5 minute read • 145 Comments

Every few weeks, a new poll emerges with evidence of a phenomenon that basically never happens in Canadian politics: young people favouring the Conservative Party.

A recent Abacus Data poll showed that 37 per cent of 18 to 29 year olds were prepared to back the Tories — a larger base of support than for either the Liberals or the NDP.

Abacus also found that a plurality of 18-44 voters are favouring the Conservatives for the first time. Previously, the category was reliably dominated by the Liberals.



Results of a June poll showing that the Conservatives are now leading among the 18 to 44 set, a demographic that has traditionally been dominated by the Liberals.
Results of a June poll showing that the Conservatives are now leading among the 18 to 44 set, a demographic that has traditionally been dominated by the Liberals. PHOTO BY ABACUS DATA

The trend also cropped up in a May survey by Nanos research showing that young voters were increasingly abandoning the Liberals for the Tories.

Conservatives have traditionally been lucky if they can attract 25 per cent of under-29 voters. But Nanos found that in the first quarter of 2022, they were pulling in 33 per cent.

Polling analyst Bryan Breguet told National Post that surveys of under-30 voters are notoriously volatile, so he’s not yet willing to hang his hat on any notion that the Conservatives have captured a plurality of the youth vote.

However, he said that conservative parties are definitely becoming more “competitive” among the 18-34 set.

In the 2021 federal election, under-34 voters were generally most likely to lodge their votes with the NDP or the Liberals.

Based on an aggregate of opinion polls conducted throughout the 2021 federal election, Breguet found that the Tories attracted a lacklustre 26 per cent of youth voter support against the 34 per cent that they garnered overall.

What’s notable, however, is that the hard-right People’s Party of Canada obtained an incredible seven per cent of the under-34 demographic — one of their strongest demographics overall.

“So if we assume that (Conservative leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre) is getting this PPC vote (which is a good assumption), I think this confirms that a Poilievre-led CPC could do a lot better among young people,” Breguet told the Post.

Poilievre’s domineering rise in the Conservative leadership race has indeed been accompanied by disproportionate levels of youth support.

In April, one of Poilievre’s first campaign videos about housing affordability was shown by Abacus pollsters to a cross-section of Canadians. While older respondents were lukewarm about the video, more than 60 per cent of respondents aged 30 to 44 gave the video a thumbs up.

Similar results can be found in a poll of reactions to Freedom Convoy, the anti-mandate protest whose cause Poilievre has obliquely championed. A February poll by Ipsos found that among 18- to 34-year-olds, 61 per cent supported the notion that the root goals of the protest were “worthy of our sympathy.”

Among respondents 55 and over, by contrast, only 37 per cent entertained the notion that Freedom Convoy had legitimate grievances.

If a youth trend towards conservative positions keeps up, it represents a phenomenon that has happened with startling rarity in the last 100 years of Western electoral politics. As a rule, the majority of under-30 voters in Western democracies (particularly English-speaking ones) do not vote for right-wing parties.

In the United States, the Democratic Party currently enjoys blowout support among anybody under 30. An April poll by the Harvard Kennedy School found that 55 per cent of youth voters preferred Democratic control of Congress, against just 34 per cent who preferred Republican.

In the U.K.’s 2019 general election, Labour enjoyed a devastating lead among under-29 Brits. An incredible 56 per cent of 18-24 voters favoured Labour, against just 21 per cent for the Conservatives, according to YouGov.

The last major exception to this trend arguably came a generation ago in the 1980s.

In the U.K., the Conservative Party under Margaret Thatcher captured a plurality of youth voters when winning their first majority government in 1979. And by the time of Thatcher’s decisive re-election in 1983, 42 per cent of under-25 voters were backing the Conservatives against just 33 per cent who voted Labour.

U.S. President Ronald Reagan similarly helped spearhead a brief exodus of young people to the Republican Party. At the end of Reagan’s second term in 1988, a report by The New York Times cited a poll of 18-29 voters from 1980 in which Democrats had outnumbered Republicans by more than two to one.

The Times noted that after eight years of Reagan, that same group of voters was now almost perfectly divided among Republicans and Democrats.
 
And part of being an employer and a member of a civil society is to minimize risk to the extent that we reasonably can. It seem the 'reasonably can' part is what people diverge on.

REASONABLE

The most divisive word in the English language. I loathe and detest its rise in legal documents. It is an open invitation to adjudication meaning that every decision has the potential to go before a tribunal, a court, a jury.

I date the rise of the "reasonable" cop-out to the introduction of the ISO standards. standards that were developed when the Europeans tried to amalgamate a bunch of national standards and couldn't come to definitive conclusions. As a result they punted and opted for the reasonable solution.

The lack of clarity that resulted has had a chilling effect on innovation. Nobody is willing to risk being wrong anymore. And even if they are, their insurers, banks and investors aren't.
 
What is "reasonable"? Is it just the average of whatever the majority believes?

I don't trust majorities. They occasionally do really sh!tty things.
 
I don't trust minorities or majorities. I occasionally do really shitty things.

Why would I expect anything different from a group of people just like me?
 
People forget it was reasonable people who supported Residential Schools, exclusion of Chinese and Indian immigrants, forced relocation of the Inuit. These were all "Politically correct" in their day.
 
Reasonable people, from reasonable families, go to reasonable schools where they learn the catechism of reason.
 
REASONABLE

The most divisive word in the English language. I loathe and detest its rise in legal documents. It is an open invitation to adjudication meaning that every decision has the potential to go before a tribunal, a court, a jury.

I date the rise of the "reasonable" cop-out to the introduction of the ISO standards. standards that were developed when the Europeans tried to amalgamate a bunch of national standards and couldn't come to definitive conclusions. As a result they punted and opted for the reasonable solution.

The lack of clarity that resulted has had a chilling effect on innovation. Nobody is willing to risk being wrong anymore. And even if they are, their insurers, banks and investors aren't.
I think it's use in technical standards is generally caveated by the assumption that the people involved in that assessment have the necessary expertise, and not random people on the street. You can always call up standards with additional restrictions on acceptable criteria, but that's where the expertise comes in.

For contracts the flip side is trying to be hyper specific, and then you get unenforceable clauses or things that come up not in the hyper-specific wording. Similarly in laws there will always be interpretation and changes over time, as you just can't keep up with technological advances etc.

If it's down to arguing over the definition of a word in a contract, things have already gone sideways. Some of the relational contracting models are interesting in that they focus on avoiding that scenario with some dispute resolutions and include some outs to end a contract if the relationship breaks down.
 
What restrictive policies are they talking about that is preventing people from getting into houses that is specific to the LPC?

Our requirements for qualifying for a mortgage and the stress test are stricter than in the US, but if you look at how devastating that was when there was even a slight uptick in mortgage rates it's not an unreasonable check to protect people from getting into mortgages outside what they can actually afford.

So far no government of any political affiliation has any good solution to improve housing affordability, and municipalities are already in trouble for approving building on flood plains and other spots you shouldn't settle down in. If the CPC were currently in power, does anyone seriously think that housing would suddenly be affordable? It's the same story in other western democracies, and far worse the UK where they have a long running Tory government.

It's also the smallest voter group by demographic, with the lowest turnout, so weirdly optimistic article. People liking a PP video of housing affordability doesn't translate into support either; lots of videos of Bernie Sanders appearing on Fox News in front of a panel, and having hard core Republican voters agree with him for things like being able to get health care without going bankrupt, but they still wouldn't have voted for them. Similarly, I can broadly agree in a survey that the underlying stated goals of the convoy made sense while still thinking the execution was ridiculous and it got overrun by idiots without a plan and didn't actually represent the stated goals in practice.
 
What restrictive policies are they talking about that is preventing people from getting into houses that is specific to the LPC?

Our requirements for qualifying for a mortgage and the stress test are stricter than in the US, but if you look at how devastating that was when there was even a slight uptick in mortgage rates it's not an unreasonable check to protect people from getting into mortgages outside what they can actually afford.

So far no government of any political affiliation has any good solution to improve housing affordability, and municipalities are already in trouble for approving building on flood plains and other spots you shouldn't settle down in. If the CPC were currently in power, does anyone seriously think that housing would suddenly be affordable? It's the same story in other western democracies, and far worse the UK where they have a long running Tory government.

It's also the smallest voter group by demographic, with the lowest turnout, so weirdly optimistic article. People liking a PP video of housing affordability doesn't translate into support either; lots of videos of Bernie Sanders appearing on Fox News in front of a panel, and having hard core Republican voters agree with him for things like being able to get health care without going bankrupt, but they still wouldn't have voted for them. Similarly, I can broadly agree in a survey that the underlying stated goals of the convoy made sense while still thinking the execution was ridiculous and it got overrun by idiots without a plan and didn't actually represent the stated goals in practice.
Pierre Poilievre is a landlord. So is his wife. They are part owners in a home rental company. I can see why he would want to fire the gatekeepers. MPs also get housing subsidies and many use them for things like this…

It’s a good sound bite but people buying income properties are likely also keeping others out of the market. Nothing wrong with what he does. Just a little rich that he talks about it when he’s had subsidized housing for his entire life.

There isn’t much the can do to fix the problem. Municipalities need to fix this not the feds.
 
Pierre Poilievre is a landlord. So is his wife. They are part owners in a home rental company. I can see why he would want to fire the gatekeepers. MPs also get housing subsidies and many use them for things like this…

It’s a good sound bite but people buying income properties are likely also keeping others out of the market. Nothing wrong with what he does. Just a little rich that he talks about it when he’s had subsidized housing for his entire life.

There isn’t much the can do to fix the problem. Municipalities need to fix this not the feds.
Yikes, that's an awkward reality.

I think a lot of things get blamed on the feds where it's really just global events. Inflation is up around the world, housing and cost of living is a problem everywhere, and things are tough all over.

The solution for some of these would actually be closer to communism (ie government housing for all, fixed prices on most goods etc), and normal conservative doctrine of smaller government and less regulation would actually make the problems worse than they are right now.

I don't like Trudeau, but I think Canada weathered the storm relatively well for COVID, our safe and conservative mortgage rules means there aren't tens of thousands of people financially ruined for decades by small mortgage rate increases, and we don't have a shortage of staples. Russia invading Ukraine drove up food costs, the follow on sanctions drove up fuel costs, and the fuel cost increases drive everything up, so is a bit of a perfect storm.

One thing that I found actually refreshing in COVID was the federal and provincial governments putting party politics aside and collaborating fairly well, so compared to that the hyper-partisanship in federal politics is particularly odious. I'd probably prefer a bit of a Thanos approach in the next election, where the MP spots are cut in half and there is a new crop of party leaders, but barring that still don't see much appealing in the CPC party to vote for.

Which is frustrating, because I would like a real alternative, not someone who will ride the populist wave whichever way the wind is blowing. Not sure any of the 5 look appealing, but Scott Atchinson seems to be reasonably good from what little I've seen.
 
our safe and conservative mortgage rules means there aren't tens of thousands of people financially ruined for decades by small mortgage rate increases
Mortgage rates have just doubled in a year, with another 0.75 increase coming in October. There is an absolute timebomb brewing when folks come up for renewal, and the variable rates are already screwed. Anyone who overpaid by 6 figures in the last few years, and picked a low fixed rate is about to lose their home at renewal.

Trudeau has created a ton of this inflation by printing all that debt to pay for the national COVID welfare state. His Bank of Canada has no answer to inflation other that to raise rates which will completely wreck the middle and lower class that is already reeling from inflation caused by external factors.

Must be nice to have the "Sunny Ways" sunglasses on about his fiscal policy, or lack their of.
 
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