Trudeau Popularity - or not (various polling, etc.)

[Fishbone Jones]

The dramatic talk around ‘censorship’ has gotten a bit silly. Nobody from the government is coming to take away your right to say something stupid on army.ca. Our right to express a personal opinion is untouched and unaltered. You just don’t have any entitlement not to have your feelings hurt if someone else disagrees and calls you out on something you say in a social setting that they disagree with. There’s no government boot heel on anyone’s throat here. Everyone here is free to take a dump on our country if they want; someone else may just have something different to say about it.

Well, that would be your opinion.

 

[brihard]

Well, that would be your opinion.

Goons will be at your door shortly.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

The talk was of rights, and of government censorship; not social consequences or employers/groups disassociating themselves from views they don’t feel reflect their values.

Who gets to define that? Certainly not just the person who wants to parse censorship according to their own definition.

 

[brihard]

Who gets to define that? Certainly not just the person who wants to parse censorship according to their own definition.

I’m just going with the context and flow of the thread. Your post was reasonably specific:

Government censorship is already here, let's not go rushing it down the road to losing personal opinion also. That will come soon enough. You can eat as much as you want, live as extravagant as you want, but if the government has its boot heel on your throat and is controlling your destiny, can take your home and food by cancelling you, you live in a shithole.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Yes, I was. I was speaking of trudeau's current bills on censorship. What I said was, I don't want to rush headlong into the same being imposed on individual speech.

 

[YZT580]

The talk was of rights, and of government censorship; not social consequences or employers/groups disassociating themselves from views they don’t feel reflect their values.

if a person is unable to express an opinion without fear of social consequences as you so nicely put it then you are not living in a free society. If the government doesn't back up your freedom to speak on an issue then they are de facto aiding and abetting society's censorship. This is all providing that the individual is not advocating insurrection or active discrimination. In fact, the organization that disciplines an individual for expressing their views is in itself being racist. That old saying applies: I may not agree with you but I will defend your right to speak just as I am doing now.

 

[daftandbarmy]

if a person is unable to express an opinion without fear of social consequences as you so nicely put it then you are not living in a free society. If the government doesn't back up your freedom to speak on an issue then they are de facto aiding and abetting society's censorship. This is all providing that the individual is not advocating insurrection or active discrimination. In fact, the organization that disciplines an individual for expressing their views is in itself being racist. That old saying applies: I may not agree with you but I will defend your right to speak just as I am doing now.

Here it comes ....

https://twitter.com/x/status/1773046329159160017

 

[Brad Sallows]

It's difficult to protect freedoms of conscience and expression. The easy part is to forbid governments from getting involved, and even then people will be pushing the extreme cases, and using "wins" to move the Overton window and start on the next encroachment. Beyond government, the only real stick is to put some obligations on any organization (commercial or otherwise) receiving any kind of government funding or other preferential treatment.

 

[brihard]

if a person is unable to express an opinion without fear of social consequences as you so nicely put it then you are not living in a free society. If the government doesn't back up your freedom to speak on an issue then they are de facto aiding and abetting society's censorship. This is all providing that the individual is not advocating insurrection or active discrimination. In fact, the organization that disciplines an individual for expressing their views is in itself being racist. That old saying applies: I may not agree with you but I will defend your right to speak just as I am doing now.

That doesn’t square with reality; by your reasoning no free society can possibly exist. Social consequences are implicit in any society, or any gathering of humans. You are free to both associate and to disassociate. If I’m, say, an employer, and one of my employees goes viral for some racist tirade, their freedom is not infringed just because I fire them. If a political party turfs a member for having views completely antithetical to the party’s platform, that’s again not the individual’s freedom of expression being trampled. Say I were to decide to announce that I, personally, think that (insert ethnic group) are disgusting, and then I follow up with a TV interview in which I express the belief that an adult should be allowed to have sex with prepubescent children. Uour position would hold that my employment, political party membership, book club membership, personal friendships, invitation to Christmas dinner, and spot at my regular bar should all be safe, and my boss, political party leader, book club, friends, family, and proprietor of my local tavern have no say in the matter. That’s absurd.

 

[CountDC]

That's not an opinion, that's a fact, in both raw terms and relative terms. What do I mean in raw terms and relative terms?

In raw terms, there are 195 countries in the world.

Canada ranks 17th in the Human Development Index.
Canada ranks 10th in GDP (nominal), and 16th (PPP).
Canada ranks 14th in the Index of Economic Freedom.
Canada ranks 15th in the World Freedom of the Press Index.
Canada ranks 11th in the Global Peace Index.
Canada ranks anywhere from 6th to 19th in Life Expectancy (depending on which organization you ask).
Canada ranks 15th in World Happiness.
Canada ranks 18th in Gender Equality.
Canada ranks 2nd in Credit Rating.
Canada ranks 1st in Freedom of the World which measures civil liberties and political rights.
Canada ranks 13th in the Economist Democracy Index.
Canada ranks 13th in the Legatum Prosperity Index.
Canada ranks 13th in the Human Freedom Index.
Canada ranks 7th in the Global Food Security Index.
Canada ranks 111th in the Pollution index (a the higher the number the better, it's ranking the worst countries, so 1st is the dirtiest country)
Canada ranks 8th in the production of scientific research.
Canada ranks 15th in the Global Innovation Index.
Canada ranks in the top 15 (often in the top 5) in just about every category of "5-year survivability rate" for common cancers.
Canada is the 2nd most educated country in the world.

And, if you want to accept a more subjective assessment, Canada is regularly in the top 3 best countries in the world, even during the years of the dystopian rule of the tyrant Justin Trudeau.

Further, a lot of these rankings also include some very tiny countries (in both physical size and population, i.e. Lichtenstein), and sometimes even special administrative areas (like Hong Kong). If you remove those, our rankings go up.

Finally, if you look at the countries on either side of us in these rankings, they are all countries that just about anyone would agree are "good countries".

I'm not wearing rose coloured glasses. This is a great country.

Now, what do I mean by relative terms?

@QV claimed Canada was a shithole country. Even if you aren't happy with the ranking above, they nonetheless put us light years ahead of any country someone would ever consider "shithole".

All those stats mean is that Canada is not the worst, not that it isn't a shithole. it should be obvious that your last line is not 100% as someone here has stated it is a shithole. I am going out on this and guessing that the odds are one person saying it here most likely means there are others thinking the same. Although I personally don't think it is a shithole yet I do see how others could view it that way. Even some immigrants have left as Canada was not what they expected and things were better for them where them migrated from. Personal opinions are just that and if by someone else's standard Canada is a shithole then to them it is a shithole.

The talk was of rights, and of government censorship; not social consequences or employers/groups disassociating themselves from views they don’t feel reflect their values.

True and if we look at everything over the years there have been several attempts at different levels and parties of government to be able to censor social media under the guise of protecting people but using such vague terminology that it could be used to control things to suit their own agenda. I for one don't trust any of the politicians when it comes to proposed social media controls and look at the wording very sceptically to see how it could be twisted into censorship.

 

[Haggis]

if a person is unable to express an opinion without fear of social consequences as you so nicely put it then you are not living in a free society. If the government doesn't back up your freedom to speak on an issue then they are de facto aiding and abetting society's censorship. This is all providing that the individual is not advocating insurrection or active discrimination. In fact, the organization that disciplines an individual for expressing their views is in itself being racist. That old saying applies: I may not agree with you but I will defend your right to speak just as I am doing now.

On an individual level, in the pre-social media era, the "social consequences" of expressing an offensive opinion was possibly getting punched in the face. The government tacitly protected your right to be offensive with criminal laws against someone punching you in the face "just because". Even so, there are circumstances where a punch in the face is warranted and could be legally excused. Today, that "punch in the face" is job loss, suspension from duty or civil legal action by those you've offended.

Organizationally, everyone who's ever served has probably been told at some point in their career to "not embarrass the family". Which means that employers have the ability, through progressive discipline, to attempt to correct the behaviour of employees - on or off duty - whose opinions they deem to be incompatible with their employment, up to and including termination. Think back the the guy from TO who was sacked from his $100K+ Ontario Hydro job for defending another man who yelled "FHRITP" at a female reporter. (He was later rehired after arbitration as he was not trhe one wh made the remark). A second, more egregious example from the pre YouTube era is the US cop who shot a subject and yells "got you, mothafukka!".

Ironically, I typed this post while taking a break from online training on workplace harrassment and violence prevention.

 

[YZT580]

That doesn’t square with reality; by your reasoning no free society can possibly exist. Social consequences are implicit in any society, or any gathering of humans. You are free to both associate and to disassociate. If I’m, say, an employer, and one of my employees goes viral for some racist tirade, their freedom is not infringed just because I fire them. If a political party turfs a member for having views completely antithetical to the party’s platform, that’s again not the individual’s freedom of expression being trampled. Say I were to decide to announce that I, personally, think that (insert ethnic group) are disgusting, and then I follow up with a TV interview in which I express the belief that an adult should be allowed to have sex with prepubescent children. Uour position would hold that my employment, political party membership, book club membership, personal friendships, invitation to Christmas dinner, and spot at my regular bar should all be safe, and my boss, political party leader, book club, friends, family, and proprietor of my local tavern have no say in the matter. That’s absurd.

You are correct. There is no free society. All groups are constrained by particular rules that govern their behaviour. The difficulty lies in an organization that defines its parameters after the fact which is the case in many of these disciplinary actions. Currently, if you go on a racist tirade defending Hamas, nothing will happen however, support Israel and there are any number of organizations that will censure you to the point where job security is jeopardized. If a person is fearful of expressing a contrary opinion to the group, that is not freedom. Better to drop the illustrations and look at the results. People are becoming afraid to speak out with the members of your local woke committee doing a pretty darn good job of imitating the Ku Klux Klan

 

[Lumber]

CBC. No friend of Poliviere

There are more than 30 encampments throughout the municipality, and right now only five are designated encampment sites. Grand Parade and Victoria Park are currently "significantly" over the proposed capacity.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/halifax-plans-locations-for-new-tent-encampments-temporary-housing-1.6998130

Just because they aren't official, doesn't mean they aren't there. Liberal gaslighting.

Wait, are you calling me a Liberal?

The "30 encampments" includes things like the 2 tents at Nick Meagher Community Park. You claimed there were 30 "Tudeauvilles". I would assume to fit the definition of a "ville", it would need to more than just a 2 or 3 tents in a park, but a significant encampment. So, maybe more than the 5 designated ones, but not 30.

CBC again

As cost of living soars, millions of Canadians are turning to food banks​

New report from Food Banks Canada shows highest numbers since it began collecting data in 1989​

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/food-bank-use-highest-in-canadian-history-hunger-count-2023-report-1.7006464

The number isn't 2,000,000 people, but 2,000,000 visits. It's not always the same people. If the same people visited the food banks every day all year, that would mean a total of only 5,479 people using foodbanks. Obviously, some people use it a lot, and some people maybe only have visited the foodbank once all year, but however you slice it, there are not millions of unique individual Canadians relying on foodbanks.

 

[ModlrMike]

You say that like 2,000,000 is not a lot.

 

[Jarnhamar]

There was a total of 2 million individual VISITS throughout 2023.

A 32 per cent increase compared to March 2022, and a 78.5 per cent increase compared to March 2019

Potentially due to covid, but continuing to trend upwards.

 

[Maxman1]

More to the point, how many of those six were there before Trudeau came into power?

6 is too many, but calling homeless encampments “Trudeauvilles” is about as correct as calling the homeless crisis in Victoria “Klein-stans” because Ralph Klein bought one-way bus tickets for AB’s homeless to BC.

But I digress. Back to Trudeau-bashing…

Horse-drawn cars were called Bennett Buggies after Prime Minister Richard Bennett.

Bennett buggy - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Fishbone Jones]

More to the point, how many of those six were there before Trudeau came into power?

6 is too many, but calling homeless encampments “Trudeauvilles” is about as correct as calling the homeless crisis in Victoria “Klein-stans” because Ralph Klein bought one-way bus tickets for AB’s homeless to BC.

But I digress. Back to Trudeau-bashing…

I don't agree. And if calling them Trudeauvilles sticks in the craw of thin skinned liberals, so much the better

 

[Lumber]

You say that like 2,000,000 is not a lot.

Oh it is and percentage wise it's frightening and I hope the government (regardless of who it is) starts taking more serious measures to address this.

 

[Lumber]

I don't agree. And if calling them Trudeauvilles sticks in the craw of thin skinned liberals, so much the better

Again, I really feel like you're calling me a Liberal.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Oh it is and percentage wise it's frightening and I hope the government (regardless of who it is) starts taking more serious measures to address this.

You seriously don't expect our sock puppet to admit fault, do you? You'll have to wait til after the election if you expect action on the hungry and homeless.