Current composition of the House of Commons
Only 4 of those parties have official party status, and the structure of the NDP/Liberal supply and confidence agreement arguably makes them the same party.
So, boiled down, there are 3 parties that are relevant, and only 2 that are relevant to the nation as a whole.
If only a federal political party with electoral victory within their reach had promised a meaningful reform to the first past the post system. Around 2015. That would have really been timely, and materially improved the Canadian political space.
Liberals breaking a promise that wasn't rooted in a sincere vision of what this country should look like, and instead was made to secure votes from a specific demographic group :shocked pikachu:
Very cool concept.
Always wanted to go to Def Con. Good luck & have fun!
I get the chicken/egg situation, for sure. Without material being posted, the community looks dead. I think the contentbot currently pulls things too far - with so many posts that are reddit links, with almost all of them having 0 comments on Lemmy, it kind of makes the community here look and feel like a proxy for r/edmonton. I see that you've put effort into making the contentbot bring over curated posts, and that's really cool, but I think it's bringing over too much.
I think an online community needs a few things to work well, and one of them is that It should be a water cooler, where people can talk about the news, share their views, & discuss. The news posts are brought here, which is great, but they get diluted by the amount of reddit links. Getting people to actually comment is hard, if they feel like they're speaking into a void.
The thread/comment format is amazing for people to ask questions, and get good answers. Like, "where can I find a jewelers hammer in Edmonton?". The sort of q/a that search engines deliver poorly on. But I understand, it's hard to get that q/a going, if nobody is commenting. And I'd be disincentivized to even post a thread with that question, if the majority of the threads have 0 comments - I wouldn't really expect an answer.
So, the goal would be to build on the existing subscriber numbers, and incentivize people to comment. There are already 425 subscribers, which is cool. And the users per month here is high for a city-centered community, so we know people want to be here. Maybe pinned weekly general discussion, and q/a threads would be a good way to get people talking? I'd comment in those, to try and get things kick started :)
I mean, that's fine. Good, even.
Thanks to you for modding, and I appreciate your efforts. To speak honestly though, something that stops me from getting more involved here is that all the posts are almost exclusively made by a bot that links back to reddit posts. I think that's kind of a bummer.
I think this platform is exactly the sort of thing that millennial politicians will be pushing for. So we'll see it in maybe 10-15 years.
One of the first things Trudeau did as Prime Minister was break the top-line platform promise that got him elected - he promised Canadians that the 2015 federal election would be the last one under the first past the post system. So I'd say from the standpoint of democracy, he had an absolutely horrible start.
Of course he went on to reap the benefits of the imbalanced first past the post system for two subsequent federal elections, one of which he called unnecessarily during the pandemic in order to consolidate power for his party.
I think him and his party have been vaporware since day one.
Agreed - "do something" is the way forward here. That said, every day the Liberals take heat on their inaction on foreign interference, the profile of the issue rises. And I think in the big picture, that's good for Canadian democracy. Hopefully it leads parties to take stronger and more detailed stances in their platforms for combating election interference. But there I go wishing again...
Like everyone else, I too am baffled that security clearance is the hill that Poilievre is willing die on. Makes him look like just another House pugilist who is dug in on a stance and deaf to context and reason.
FWIW, I think the NDP has had consistently reasonable and principled stances on this issue since the CSIS leak. I like the cut of their jib on this. So, I think there's good reason to believe that they'd be doing far better on this file than the Liberals. I understand the "every party sucks" mentality, but I don't actually think it's true in this circumstance.
I don't blame anyone for wanting to know the information about this up-front. We would absolutely not be here talking about this issue, with pdf copies of a detailed, public NSICOP report if not for a whistleblower who acted well outside the established channels to alert Canadians to institutional inaction on foreign interference. The NSICOP report actually admits as much.
The established system is not functioning as it should, and the current government has shown not only limited interest, but active unwillingness to do what's right when it comes to foreign interference. Knowing these things, and then being scolded to "Wait for the system to work as intended", is brutal. We don't have reason to believe that the system will actually work as intended. The current government is to blame for allowing this erosion of trust, and if they're tired of hearing "tell us the names", they shouldn't have sat on intelligence advice for 6 years. This situation would be playing out completely differently if the current government had even a slightly positive track record on dealing with foreign interference.
We deserve to live in a society where MPs who wittingly take part in the subversion of Canadian democracy can expect to be promptly imprisoned. Instead, we live in a society where it's not unthinkable that nothing further will happen or be disclosed about this issue.
The House partisan gamesmanship needs to be ignored if we're going to be serious about national security and sovereignty. Canadians deserve to know if their member of Parliament wittingly aided a foreign interference operation. We need to know right now. The notion that an election could occur while undisclosed traitors are on the ballot? This would be catastrophic.
There are absolutely no excuses for the current government's horrific file on foreign interference:
There's no good reason for any of it, and their inaction is an open invitation to China, India, and others for further interference.
It's impossible to agree with Minister LeBlanc. Canadians cannot have confidence that police can investigate and lay charges when warranted. The NSICOP report details how our system is configured in such a way as to make that difficult or impossible.
I think the polarization about the issue of what to do about drug addiction is partially a symptom of the fact that different communities have different needs. The approach needs to be different in Gunn than in downtown Edmonton. But, we're in a position where the political interests of the citizens in those places don't overlap very much, so no matter what, we're going to end up with solutions that nobody is fully happy with.
Speaking as a person with absolutely no love for the UCP, and with dissimilar views about how to address the problem of addiction, I don't hate the fact that they're actually trying something that might help people. Maybe this program won't work, but at least it's an attempt. It's better than hand waving about abstinence and law and order which takes no effort at all.