Québec elects new centre-right party, voting to cut taxes, privatise health and cut immigration

[Squiggle]

Because I can't imagine a Morrocan politician telling Morroccans to 'go home' or complaining constantly that most Morroccans are Muslim and alien to Morrocco. It's not rocket science. Their motives are diffferent. All Quebec is doing is copying the tactics of the Atheist Caliphate (France).

Where can I get mind reading powers from bro?

[Heathen Hammer]

Because I can't imagine a Morrocan politician telling Morroccans to 'go home' or complaining constantly that most Morroccans are Muslim and alien to Morrocco. It's not rocket science. Their motives are diffferent. All Quebec is doing is copying the tactics of the Atheist Caliphate (France).

Oh yes, those evil racist infidels not allowing Muslim men to force women to wear bags on their heads or beat them. Oh, such oppression!

[Love Mountain]

If your rationale behind banning religious symbols is "Even Muslim countries are doing it" then your rationale is bad.

[mongrel]

Oh yes, those evil racist infidels not allowing Muslim men to force women to wear bags on their heads or beat them. Oh, such oppression!

Does the law in Canada or Quebec compel women to wear exotic headgear? That is news to us living on Real Earth

[Squiggle]

Does the law in Canada or Quebec compel women to wear exotic headgear? That is news to us living on Real Earth

Force can only come through the law? Huh?

[Love Mountain]

Force can only come through the law? Huh?

Nobody here said that. The issue of muslim men abusing their wives is an issue of domestic abuse.

[Aexodus]

Found a good summary by the Globe and Mail of CAQ. It notes that CAQ is the first openly right wing government in Quebec since 1970.

Religious symbols


Now Mr. Legault plans to ban authority figures such as teachers, police officers, judges and bureaucrats from wearing religious garments – and he’s willing to use the notwithstanding clause to shield such policies from constitutional challenges.

This is clearly the most controversial element here, but we should expand the conservation beyond a single religion and into why a religious garment (not headwear) ban shoukd happen. It has nothing to do with Quebecers’ private and domestic lives.

Why do we care more about Islam than Christianity and Judaism when it comes to a indiscriminate ban on religious garments in a secular government?

It’s very French of him, though.

Immigration


Immigrants will have a harder time starting new lives in Quebec under a CAQ government: Mr. Legault promised to cut the annual quota by 10,000 people a year, and to subject newcomers to a “Quebec values” and French language test.

Trudeau called a lady racist earlier in the year for asking him what he would do about illegal immigration. I believe Legault will have some friction with the federal government over migration. Does Quebec want to protect jobs, or francophone culture with tighter immigration laws?

Cannabis


Mr. Legault wants Quebec to have Canada’s highest legal minimum age for buying cannabis: 21, up from 18 as his predecessor had decided. The PQ would also bar Quebeckers from smoking cannabis in all public places. Add to that Quebec’s pre-existing ban on growing cannabis at home, and you have some of the most restrictive drug policies in the country.

Quebec’s first Cannabis stores opened yesterday, publicly funded. Yes, like Canadian liqueur stores, separate Cannabis stores will be government-run and government-funded. Which means your tax dollars are paying for people to get high on green.

However, municipalities can decide how they want to implement this, whether in a liberal or conservative way. CAQ are squarely in the conservative camp, however, they don’t oppose the legality of cannabis itself it would seem.

Climate


Mr. Legault’s fellow premiers have been increasingly restive about the Trudeau government’s carbon tax, which aims to meet Canada’s commitments under the 2015 Paris climate-change accord. Starting Jan. 1, 2019, Ottawa can impose a minimum carbon price in any province without its own tax or cap-and-trade system, which Quebec has and which Mr. Legault plans to keep. That puts Mr. Legault on one side of a potentially messy legal battle between the provinces and Ottawa: Ontario, a former partner in the cap-and-trade regime with Quebec and California, backed out after Premier Doug Ford took office, while Alberta is putting its carbon tax on hold because of the Trans Mountain pipeline dispute and Saskatchewan is fighting the carbon tax in court.
Economy


Like his Ontario counterpart, Doug Ford, Mr. Legault ran for office on his business credentials, promising Quebeckers a leaner and more fiscally conservative government. The economy he inherits is a fairly stable one, thanks in part to balanced budgets and highly unpopular social-service cuts by his Liberal predecessor.
Trade


In the United States-Mexico Canada Agreement(USMCA), the Trudeau government made a big concession: Opening 3.59 per cent of Canada’s protected dairy market to U.S. producers. That’s alarmed farmers in Quebec, the largest dairy-producing province, who fear competition with cheaper American products will hurt their revenue and system of production quotas. Mr. Legault has promised to fight for farmers' interests, and Mr. Trudeau plans at some point to compensate the farmers for their losses.

What are your thoughts on CAQ fiscal policy?

[NorseThing]

I find it interesting that the promise of compensation to dairy farmers hurt by the not yet ratified trade agreement is very similar to the Trump administration involving the tariff spat with China. Both will fail in the end to compensate or the budget will be a bust. The whole purpose of trade is to find these niches where consumer gain by trade to force efficiency onto the bloated and protected producers. Not certain that this is a pure conservative failing though.

[mongrel]

“Quebec values” and French language test, eh. Shouldn't the Quebecois have to pass an Algonquian language and a Cree values test?

[Aexodus]

Quebe is no longer an Indian tribal land, I wouldn’t think so mongrel

[Genghis Skahn]

Mr. Legault wants Quebec to have Canada’s highest legal minimum age for buying cannabis: 21

Uh, what? How would that help anyone or anything at all? Why is he ok with an 18 yo drinking alcohol(far more dangerous than cannabis in almost every way imaginable) but wants to raise the weed age to 21? Literally makes no sense whatsoever; some grade A conservative logic there.

Yes, like Canadian liqueur stores, separate Cannabis stores will be government-run and government-funded. Which means your tax dollars are paying for people to get high on green.

Very few people are "outraged" over legalization, and moreover, many cannabis stores are actually privately owned(I know this because the local news plainly stated as such, also the first stores selling it where I live were privately owned), not necessarily government-run(though access to government funds, banks and etc. means that Canadian grow ops/weed firms actually have a competitive advantage over their US counterparts, provoking outrage from US grow ops/weed companies who are calling on Trump to do something about it from the firms who don't plan to, or that can't, move North). Legalized cannabis is projected to increase our tax revenue, so I really fail to see how "my hard earned tax dollars" being spent on a profitable(and non-immoral) enterprise which virtually every economist agrees will help the Canadian economy would be a bad thing. Again, it's vastly safer than alcohol as far as recreational drugs go(100x less toxic than alcohol), and that's been legal in Canada forever. Furthermore, cannabis was made illegal in most countries under absolutely dishonest pretexts--the things they used to say about cannabis are just unfathomable and have been so thoroughly disproven that the anti-legalization wing has virtually lost all credibility in the eyes of both the scientific community and the populace at large by this point. Trudeau's promise to legalize it won him a LOT of votes, you realize this, right? That would be because many Canadians are not opposed to cannabis, and also possibly due to the absolute butt-blasting that the anti-legalization camp has taken over the decades via their near-constant stream of false claims made about "the dangers of the ebil cannabis plant". In fact, I think that their anti-weed propaganda has even hurt prospects of instilling in the popular mind that cannabis can actually be dangerous, due to the many many false claims made about the negative effects of cannabis; false claims that deprived many sick people of a literal wonder drug(it's REALLY difficult to find a drug with as broad an application and as few negative side-effects as cannabis has). Here are just a few of these absolutely false claims:

https://www.history.com/news/why-the...ijuana-illegal

Police officers in Texas claimed that marijuana incited violent crimes, aroused a ‘lust for blood,’ and gave its users ‘superhuman strength.’ Rumors spread that Mexicans were distributing this ‘killer weed’ to unsuspecting American schoolchildren.”

Even though there was no evidence to support claims that marijuana had a Jekyll-and-Hyde effect, 29 states outlawed marijuana between 1916 and 1931.

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...out-marijuana/

People on pot "shoot each other ... stab each other ... strangle each other, drive under the influence, kill families." Nancy Grace, Jan. 14, 2014.

The HLN host spoke to the darkest fears about marijuana users. Grace, a one time prosecutor, said she had seen people high on pot "wipe out a whole family."
We found a few individual cases that support her point but there’s no evidence that marijuana itself drives people to commit violent acts. Dr. Ihsan Salloum, professor of psychiatry at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine told us the clear majority of users don’t become aggressive.

Yes, that's exactly what happened at 12:00am on Oct. 17th in Canada, bedlam, madness, anarchy! Weed ruined my country! Help!

I should note that AFAIK, it was America's policy of making the drug illegal that caused so many other countries to follow suit in doing so. Certainly, very few governments made scientific inquiries into the drug's safety, they just up and made it illegal for virtually no logical reason, to my mind's eye. Well, that's the past, baby. Today we know that marijuana is safer than both cigarettes and alcohol, both of which have been readily legal for a very long time and both of whom were thought at one time to be safer than cannabis(yet another falsehood).

http://www.drugpolicy.org/blog/how-d...al-first-place

Cannabis was placed in the most restrictive category, Schedule I, supposedly as a place holder while then President Nixon commissioned a report to give a final recommendation.

The Schafer Commission, as it was called, declared that marijuana should not be in Schedule I and even doubted its designation as an illicit substance. However, Nixon discounted the recommendations of the commission, and marijuana remains a Schedule I substance.

Yeah, treating cannabis as a schedule I drug is retarded...

As I said, the more insidious effect of these false claims has been that legitimate criticism of marijuana has been all too easily lumped in with the absolute nonsense coming from anti-legalization groups, such that people are now willing to massively overrate it's benefits and downplay it's negatives because of the absolute lies that critics used to purvey about the drug for decades.

Oh, and on a final note: https://www.usnews.com/news/articles...ical-marijuana

Advocates for expanding medical marijuana laws say they can reduce the use of prescription painkillers, which are highly addictive and can result in overdose deaths when used incorrectly. Medical marijuana hasn't been evaluated for efficacy by the Food and Drug Administration, but its proponents say it has helped them cope with pain. Prescription painkillers have led to a widespread opioid epidemic in the U.S., for which overdose deaths reached 28,647 in 2014, including deaths from heroin.

There's some evidence to suggest that legalizing it decreases the severity of the opioid crisis. Member? Those legal prescription drugs that are actually extremely dangerous and addictive, but which have had much less negative propaganda spread about them, and which are totally ing up entire communities? And which didn't have nearly as much trouble becoming legal and FDA approved? I member! Canada has opioid problems too, so hopefully this data will have some reliability to it--yet another blow to the anti-legalization camp, who had, to my knowledge, no real issue making opioid prescription painkillers legal.

Sorry to derail the thread, but it really irks me when people play the anti-cannabis card, since it's highly likely that most of the opposition they feel towards the drug is rooted in historic lies and propaganda(with racial undertones, even) made by alarmists who basically knew nothing about the drug, or it's effects, whatsoever.

[Love Mountain]

It's just weed dude. It's not the end of the world, and while the rationale is retarded I'm sure 18 year olds can survive for 3 years by getting it illegally or simply waiting. The main issue will be how they punish offenders, not whether it's illegal or not. Jaywalking is also illegal and stupid, so are a lot of other relatively minor victim-less crimes. Many of those petty "crimes" simply aren't enforced very well unless it's a particularly egregious case, or carry a minor fine.

Now Mr. Legault plans to ban authority figures such as teachers, police officers, judges and bureaucrats from wearing religious garments – and he’s willing to use the notwithstanding clause to shield such policies from constitutional challenges. Mr. Legault’s team has mused about a compromise to let existing public servants continue wearing what they have been, but that would prohibit new hires from wearing religious symbols or clothing.

Look, I've said this already before and I'll repeat it again. it's ing idiotic. Unless someone is actually covering their face and it's detrimental to building security, I really can't give any s about what government employee wears what. There are dress codes for different government departments that already do the same thing for job specific duties. Not allowing an administrative assistant, who sits at a desk all day, to wear a rosemary, or a turban, or whatever else, because it has religious connotation is stupid and needlessly creates friction for the sake of "secular" values. Secular simply means that government as an institution is separated from any kind of religious faith. It does not mean that government workers, where permissible, cannot choose what clothes or whatever, they want to wear.

immigrants will have a harder time starting new lives in Quebec under a CAQ government: Mr. Legault promised to cut the annual quota by 10,000 people a year, and to subject newcomers to a “Quebec values” and French language test. During the campaign, Mr. Legault admitted some uncertainty about how those tests would work and whether immigrants could be expelled from Quebec for failing them. Regardless, the measures could spell trouble for for businesses and municipalities competing with the rest of Canada to retain immigrants and fill urgent labour shortages.

Again, dumb. Wtf are "Quebec values" exactly? Who determines them? How many questions does one have to pass in order to be "Canadian" enough? Just admit you're racists and move on with your lives. People are so scared of being "politically correct" that they can't even admit that they are racist.

The night before Mr. Legault’s election, Canada struck a new proposed trade deal with the Trump administration, ending 14 months of haggling over how to replace the North American free-trade agreement. In the United States-Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA), the Trudeau government made a big concession: Opening 3.59 per cent of Canada’s protected dairy market to U.S. producers. That’s alarmed farmers in Quebec, the largest dairy-producing province, who fear competition with cheaper American products will hurt their revenue and system of production quotas. Mr. Legault has promised to fight for farmers' interests, and Mr. Trudeau plans at some point to compensate the farmers for their losses. In the meantime, Canadian manufacturers are still hampered by U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum, which the USMCA breakthrough did not resolve.

While I actually think subsidies may be a short-term solution, the long-term solution is to have these farmers reallocate themselves into a different sector. Some other form of farming, or maybe even an exit from agriculture entirely. The issue with subsidies is that they'll never be a short term solution. Once they're there, they'll stay as it becomes a haggling point for this particular interest group.

[mongrel]

Quebe is no longer an Indian tribal land, I wouldn’t think so mongrel

It's not French either, Britain won the French and Indian War.

[Aexodus]

In France, they have kind of a culture of secularism, called laïcité and Quebec apparently takes after this. If increasing diversity of religion makes this more difficult, Quebecois have some difficult questions to ask themselves. Now, Frenh-Canadians are not exactly the same as French Europeans, but there are parallels. Here’s a quora thread discussing why Quebec is more secular than anywhere else in Canada.

As a sidenote, in Ontario they’ve put in place a law that Sikhs are allowed to not where helmets on mopeds because of their turbans, but the rest of us do. Why, is this not the kind of thing Quebec wants to avoid, right next door to them?

France adheres to a strict form of secularism, known as laïcité, which is designed to keep religion out of public life. This principle was entrenched by law in 1905, after fierce anti-clerical struggles with the Roman Catholic church. Today, the lines are in some ways blurred. The French maintain, for instance, certain Catholic public holidays, such as Ascension. But on the whole, secular rules prevail. It would be unthinkable in France, for example, to stage a nativity play in a state primary school, or for a president to be sworn in on a Bible.

To work, laïcité has its rules. France will not fund religious institutions. French laïcité forbids the wearing of religious symbols by all employees of the state, from civil servants, to teachers, to bus drivers. The religious neutrality of the state must be apparent to all.

@mongrel In Quebec, it is the citizens of such that decide what the rules on being allowed to live there are. They’re perfectly entitled to do that. They’re not French, they’re Francophone Canadians.

[Squiggle]

Nobody here said that.

Does the law in Canada or Quebec compel women to wear exotic headgear? That is news to us living on Real Earth

Mongrel didnt say it, he implied it. Heathen, in reference to the desire to pass a law against a garment, said mockingly "Oh yes, those evil racist infidels not allowing Muslim men to force women to wear bags on their heads or beat them."
Mongrels reply can only sensically be interpreted one way: No one is forcing these women because the law doesnt mandate it. Ergo, only the law matters-- because he blows right past actual reality. Which is:

The issue of muslim men abusing their wives is an issue of domestic abuse.

In isolated ethnic and religious communities abuse very often never goes to the police as the women are too afraid to come forward [and they have no support], or the abuse comes in the form of everyday aspects of their lives, i.e dont speak unless spoken to because you are a girl, yada yada. Women can be pressured economically and socially and yes, live under real threat of violence and the state be totally unaware of that. Shock! Which is why mongrels comment was asinine and pathetic, merely pointing out that the law doesnt mandate women to wear a hijab or niqab obviously says and means nothing, because in SOCIETY in REALITY women still are, all the time, forced to do so.

edit: To be frank i would consider raising a child muslim to be child abuse, especially when it comes in tandem with sickening crap like shame about sexuality, or the onus of being a demur and humble/chaste girl. Your a "slut" whos apparently done something wrong if men see your hair in many societies. That is sick, it comes from brainwashing, and it is abusive.

[NorseThing]

I am not Muslim, so perhaps I do not understand. Billions on the planet are Muslim and Muslim families raise children within the faith. Is it a be overly broad to consider raising a child as a Muslim to be child abuse? In any case, this is not what the political thread is about.

This thread is really about the immigration by illegals entering Canada from the USA due to the Trump administration getting tough on immigration while the Canadian Prime Minister is welcoming them verbally into Canada. Many are indeed Muslim and that is why elections have consequences. https://canadafreepress.com/article/...-2018-election So yes, why shouldn't the Federal government (Canada) compensate the local governments for the influx of illegals crossing the border? Of course Trudeau is not wanting to walk back on his public statements.

Just because there is an odd bit of two about dress is missing the point.

[mongrel]

In any case, this is not what the political thread is about.

.

Re Sqiggle's comments-I'd go further, insulting Twcenter's muslim community by saying they are to be considered child abusers is against TOS.

[Carl Jung was right]

-right wing party wins on the promise to cut taxes and privatize publicly owned enterprises
-newly elected party fails to push through associated cuts to public spending in areas where it would actually make sense (such as various bogus programs that serve as a transfer of wealth to politically connected industrial mafia, on top of maintenance of national monopolies and bloated administrative costs)
-cuts are inevitably made to services actually necessary for civilized society to run, such as health, education and public utilities
-tax cuts mostly benefit those in a position to take advantage of them, i.e. the ones who can afford a handy offshore account in the Azores
-public services basically go to the , which invariably shifts public opinion to the left in the next election
-left wing party gets elected. Government spending blossoms to even more unsustainable levels.
-boomers (i.e. those with a taxable income) complain about high taxes

Hello and welcome to Canadian politics simulator, would you like to start over from the top?