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ulyssessword  6mo ago (text post)   2069 thread views

Canada Federal Election 2025

Today is the day!

Poll aggregator: https://338canada.com/

Live results: https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/federal/2025/results/

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So question to people who know Canadian politics better: how much Trump's "51 state" shenanigans mattered? In my opinion - which, me not being a Canadian, together with $5 gives you a cup of coffee - Trudeau was a disaster. It looks like Canadians, however, want more of the same. Is it because they really like what Canada is becoming under Trudeau? Would like to hear opinions from people with good background in Canadian politics, especially Canadians themselves.

how much Trump's "51 state" shenanigans mattered?

Ever seem to notice how the old get into wars the young have to fight, and love excuses to have those wars?

This was a referendum on whether we should fight that war or not.
Naturally, the old love that idea (and in fairness, jingoism with respect to the US is a part of the [Eastern] Canadian identity), and voted accordingly. Since Canada doesn't have any checks and balances against those people running roughshod over the rest of the country, that's all that's needed to win.

You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into, and this is one of those times. That said, I hope the East loses this trade war and gets annexed quickly, or Alberta successfully petitions the USG for statehood, so the good people out there/here (and they do exist) don't end up suffering too much under the retaliatory tariffs. The productive, industrialized areas of Ontario voted all against this war anyway (just like they have voted against this government in every post-2015 election) and the Western provinces became even more tilted towards the Cons [their regional interest party] despite Eastern Boomer bluster (even the cities, it's worth noting, with the obvious exception of Vancouver).

All that remains to be seen is what Alberta will do in response- Smith (and to a point, Moe) seem competent enough at this game to get the tariffs reduced on energy, but as far as running an entire country I don't know.

Remember that the part of Canada that defines what Canada is [the East] has effectively no land border with the US (it's 100% dependent on long bridges these days), and the part of Canada that does not define what Canada is [the West] has literally all of the land border. Additionally, remember that each province does more trade with the US than they do with each other. An EU-style state of affairs (with respect to Canada and the US) is economically the correct one, something we were closer to at one time (before 9/11), and to a point where we've been headed all this time (especially given NAFTA; the way you stop your best and brightest running away is to become a part of that country yourself) but the US needs to control our immigration policy for that to work. And I'm OK with that given how it's been abused already.

Annexing Canada would be a disaster for US politics. We'd get a large influx of left-leaning population who are already culturally desensitized to the right's worst nightmares (no weapons, no free speech, rampant multiculturalism, full DEI, nationalized medicine, etc.), which would essentially make it California-but-Cold and ensure permanent domination of Democrats in both House and Senate, and probably enough to also ensure Presidency goes to Democrats permanently. I don't think getting a dozen or so of heroic truckers and whoever else on the right side that is in Canada is going to change that. So I don't think anybody entertains this as a serious possibility. If we're talking about piecemeal arrangement, it might be less of a disaster but I don't think it's possible to pull it off in 3 years.

We'd get a large influx of left-leaning population who are already culturally desensitized to the right's worst nightmares

That's why you don't annex the East first; all the problem people are out there (just like in the US, for that matter).

You want to pull the places that actually care, are actually culturally similar to the US midwest (which the productive, Western parts of Canada very much are), and those that are actually willing to negotiate. Trump could force the East to the table with the tariffs (you'll notice that all the people in the affected areas voted Conservative, and that's not an accident) but the West was already getting interested in some level of sovereignty on its own (permanent disenfranchisement in a rich province will do that).

A Western party, for the most part, cannot win in Canada; that much has been known for the last 150 years. If the West wants to preserve its culture it will need to act.

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