r/canadaguns Feb 06 '23

Weekly Politics Thread

Please post all your Politics or Ban-related ideas, initiatives, comments, suggestions, news articles, and recommendations in this thread. Unless new information is published in the media, recurring articles related to the gov'ts ***possible*** legislation are to be posted here. These threads will be weekly, until it's necessary for another per-week.

Previous politics threads can be found here. Previous threads can be found here.

We understand that politics is a touchy subject, and at times things can get heated. A reminder of the subreddit rules, when commenting, where subreddit users are expected to abide.

20 Upvotes

310 comments sorted by

View all comments

6

u/Brilliant_Gift1917 Feb 09 '23

Not been in the loop outside of the gun politics - is it still looking like there may be a Spring election? All this crap could be (at least temporarily) ended if we got one, and the Conservatives could even remove the OIC if they got into power.

7

u/Haybinger949 12(7) Feb 09 '23

Absolutely no chance the Liberals would launch an election until the results for the AB provincial election are in. That election is on May 29th this year, it will probably be used as a substantial bellwether for the Liberal's odds in a snap federal election.

The media has pretty much unanimously been against Smith since before she was even elected leader, and she has been getting panned almost weekly for even the most innocuous things, sometimes things that never even happened. Despite this, she realistically still has a very high chance of winning the election - the 2015 NDP win was largely due to the Conservative base being split between two separate parties. Much like the 2019 election, there really is no viable second option for anyone that doesn't support the NDP, so the only way to lose will be either poor voter turnout or if the amount of interprovincial transplants from the past 4 years is too biased to the left.

Of course if the NDP win the Alberta election this year, Saskatchewan will be pretty much the last bastion standing before Canadian oblivion.

4

u/Apples_and_Overtones Your feet suck and so do you Feb 09 '23

I could never vote for Smith. I consider her off the deep-end. I tend to be more right-wing politically but I think what the party has become, especially with this leader is too far for me and I can say I am definitely not the only one with that opinion. I would certainly not say a potential NDP win is the result of "too many transplants."

That said, not particularly keen on NDP this time around either if firearm rights are to be considered, since they're A-OK with provincial/municipal level bans.

Kinda sucks. Not interested in voting this time around tbh.

2

u/Haybinger949 12(7) Feb 10 '23

I could never vote for Smith. ...and I can say I am definitely not the only one with that opinion.

Yes, like I said they could likely be hurt a lot by people just not voting at all causing a general poor turnout.

I tend to be more right-wing politically but I think what the party has become, especially with this leader is too far for me

I have pretty much only seen this opinion online or from people who still watch the 6 o'clock like it's 1986. Other than the media surrounding them, almost none of the bills have been any different than those put forwards by the past 20 years of AB Conservative governments. Bill 1 is obviously the exception to this, but it has barely been used other than as tokenism so far. It's still the same party, with almost the exact same cabinet Kenney had.

Smith wasn't my first choice on the ballot, but my MLA still stands for what I voted by and still has my support to continue their mandate. Your thoughts may differ of course and I can respect that.

Kinda sucks. Not interested in voting this time around tbh.

Rather than abstaining, I suggest you still go to the polls, but reject your ballot. Don't spoil it, if you do that it just goes in the trash. Instead, return it to the officer as a "rejection" (I don't know the exact term for it, check the election handbook when it's published). This way it goes down as recorded that you explicitly chose to not vote for any of the available choices.