What's going on Canada?
🍁 Meta
🗺️ Provinces / Territories
🏙️ Cities / Local Communities
Sorted alphabetically by city name.
🏒 Sports
Baseball
Basketball
Curling
Hockey
Soccer
💻 Schools / Universities
Sorted by province, then by total full-time enrolment.
💵 Finance, Shopping, Sales
🗣️ Politics
🍁 Social / Culture
Rules
Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage: lemmy.ca
We have 4 years to get canadians away from Twitter and Facebook to Mastodon and Friendica to reduce the amount of influence the oligarchs have on our comms.
Lets bring back the vote subsidy, limit the contribution limits to $100 a year, lower the voting age to 16 and pass proportional representation!
lower the voting age to 16
I don't agree with this, mostly because that age range is perhaps the most influenced by social media and "misogynist male influencers".
They are too young to know better at that age, and to throw away their future because Joe Rogan or Andrew "The Rapist" Tate manipulated them is just not what this country needs.
But an overhaul of our election system is needed, and laws need to be made that protect people from the barrage of misinformation we are seeing more of every day.
Is this really your experience with +16 years old? If so, you should get your province to invest more in education.
They(16yo) can drive, they can enlist.
In most provinces, they are choosing their career, trade, university, and with fresh knowledge of history and geopolitics they get from schools.
And there is no magical switch that flips when you turn 18. The sooner they start thinking about their future, the better.
Many countries already allowed 16 years old people to vote, for more than 20 years, and they did not become a misogynist hell-hole.
Is this really your experience with +16 years old? If so, you should get your province to invest more in education.
That's the problem, though. Young males voters are swaying heavily to right-wing parties, and it's thought that this is because of the online influence of bad actors.
Of course, any age can be manipulated, but far fewer are being swayed by these “influencers” as age increases.
And a lack of education ties in with voting Conservative, so there's no incentive for the Cons to change this. They benefit from young, naive, undereducated voters.
They(16yo) can drive, they can enlist.
I'm against that, too. Young drivers are notoriously bad at driving, and have poor judgment on the road.
In most provinces, they are choosing their career, trade, university, and with fresh knowledge of history and geopolitics they get from schools.
Yes, of course. It's a transition age.
Many countries already allowed 16 years old people to vote, for more than 20 years, and they did not become a misogynist hell-hole.
Other countries may not (at least, not now) have a problem with social media influencing their young voters. So, it may "work" for them, but not for North Americans.
I'm not trying to throw this age group under the bus. It's THEIR future that we vote for, and they really should be playing a role in shaping that future.
But I'd want them to be making an informed vote, without the voice of right-wing extremists in their heads. At this present time, I don't think that could happen, because these influencers run unchecked, and it DOES impact how our youth think and act.
I have mixed feelings about Proportional Representation, I'm worried it would lessen the "local candidate" element of the election. I like the concept of voting for a local representative from my area in Parliament, no matter their party affiliation.
Then again, I like the theory behind Ranked Ballots, but unfortunately in practice they tend to just funnel third party votes to the main parties, which is not right either.
I suppose we could go with PR/STV and triple the amount of representatives to still have some sort of local area representative scheme... but that could get expensive and unwieldy very quick.
Could we get rid of the Senate and have two houses? One house small riding FPTP for local area representation, and one house be party based PR by province?
Had you not heard of mixed-member proportional rep?
If you really like the local representation that could be for you. The only recent time I can think regional MPs actually coming into play is the heating oil exemption, though.
Let's throw a wrench into things: Dual Member Proportional, a system that doesn't send people who haven't directly stood for election to Ottawa.
I haven't, that's really interesting, slightly on the complicated side to sell to people though.
So you vote both for candidate and party seperately and then once all the candidates are put in seats, they add more representatives designated by the parties to balence the party representation?
Local representation is not great for passing laws, but it is amazing to get things fixed that got bound up in the bureaucracy. Like expedite a passport, or figure out why a pension didn't come. Having your MLA or MP speak for you often has a greater impact than going solo. And it nice that your repw usually has a local office in reasonable travel distance, if you want to speak to them in person.
People in Germany do not find mixed-member proportional complicated. It’s only from our frame of reference that we believe it as such.
I have mixed feelings about Proportional Representation, I’m worried it would lessen the “local candidate” element of the election. I like the concept of voting for a local representative from my area in Parliament, no matter their party affiliation.
That is a misnomer as proportional representation is a family of electoral systems. The party-lists is the electoral system that lacks the local representation however Mixed-Member Proportional & Single Transferable Vote both retain it.
I suppose we could go with PR/STV and triple the amount of representatives to still have some sort of local area representative scheme… but that could get expensive and unwieldy very quick.
The elections would cost the same as it would only cost money at first to convert the system from first-past-the-post to the single transferable vote / mixed-member proportional.
local candidate
I used to think like that, until I realized that I never met the past 3 representatives from my riding. They sent representatives to knock on my door during the campaign saying yes to any issue I brought up, they never hold town halls, and only returned generic messages when we tried to contact them - when they answer.
The person elected this time does not live in my riding.
All of them voted with the party, and never proposed anything useful.
That was one of the questions I had for the candidates knocking this time, would you vote against the party if their decision would harm "us"(the riding)?
Today, I rather vote for anyone (or party/independent list) in Canada that would relate to my expectations. I do not care where they live, only that they do a good job.
If people didn't get their butts out to vote, we'd have a conservative government right now.
There's been a huge increase in U.S. influenced right-wing extremism in Canada and it contributed to the increase in conservative seats in gouvernent.
Don't kid yourselves. Just because P.P. didn't get elected or the Conservatives didn't get a majority, it doesn't mean there isn't a rise of right-wing extremism in Canada.
They would have swept the election if they ran without a leader.
If we don't do something about social media, disinformation, and voting reform, we will not have a Canada to protect after the next election.
It will be difficult to impossible to hold onto a country that nearly half the population would freely give away without a fight.
Unfortunately, the call to "do something" about social media will only result in renewed efforts to do the wrong thing, as the previous government attempted. Facebook will be made to behave slightly better at the cost of creating a new regulatory system that reinforces its power and makes Canada legally dangerous for fedi instances or other alternatives.
Go on Mr. Carney, please prove me wrong.
I do agree. Efforts to make things better usually bring out the worst possible defenders of what's wrong with society.
It's so incredibly frustrating.
Unfortunately, due to the piss-poor human condition, Canada - and every country on Earth that allows free speech - will go whatever direction the bots run by the nations that do NOT allow free speech want them to go. Anything else is a temporary reprieve.
Boy, I sure didn't see that coming. It's going to be very interesting seeing where such a path ends. Uncomfortable, likely, but interesting.
Totally. I was thinking about China the other day, how crazy they seemed for building the Great Firewall fifteen years ago. I felt sad for their citizens being cutoff from the internet. Now I'm sitting here looking in and I'm all like - fuck, this has been a major contributor to their sovereignty. Both in that this allowed their own strong digital economy to develop instead of getting hooked on American Big Tech, and in that it keeps the propaganda that's threatening us at bay. I'm not saying that censorship is amazing all around but just like you said, had they gone with free speech online, they'd be subject to whatever Big Social makes money from that day. It's crazy how the tables have turned from this perspective.
The Great Firewall of China serves the discussion about American social media media platforms only by providing an example of how things could be even worse.
All this would be solved if the left leaders would actually fix affordability. This is the only real reason I see so many voting right. Nobody can afford shit and they blame the left.
Problem is it's not the left's fault. The world is blaming the leaders but it's happening globally. The real problem is a few have all the wealth.
Our left leaning leaders should update tax laws to address the growing wealth gap. And start building homes so average Canadians can afford a decent home in a decent location.
It would help if we had some left leaders in the first place
The Crown corp and modular homes seems like a pretty great way of adding a lot of affordable homes. I just hope the government lasts long enough for it to actually kick off. It's not perfect and it doesn't solve capitalism, but it will help if executed well.
If I were to bet, I'd say we'll see the effects just in time for an election, and cpc will take over and take the credit.
That's the key here - the Liberals under Trudeau waited too long to move on affordability, and then they didn't do enough. I hope Carney & co can show quick improvements in housing so the CPC is less attractive.