Canada isn't looking too hot these days...

[DrakeM]

View attachment 1184679
The real sentiment behind this play on MAGA is "Make Trump Go Away". Without him, things like this hat wouldn't exist.

Saw another great variation on MAGA on a protest sign:

Morons
Are
Governing
America

51st state? No thanks, no way.

 

[tvstrip]

It's sad that so much of the election is based on the Cheeto and his antics, instead of the issues Canada had before that circus started.

 

[tvstrip]

Footage of Winnipeg police shooting at stolen truck that was driving right at them, which ended up crashing in to a house and igniting a fuel tank

Not something you see everyday in Canada, but then again, it's Winnipeg, which is the murder capital of the country. So the police are a little different there.

 

[DrakeM]

The federal election campaign is in the last couple of weeks. Tonight is the French language debate, tomorrow is the English debate. It just struck me that in order to be Prime Minister, you need at a working knowledge of both languages - kind of a minimal intelligence test. I wonder how far Trump would have got in his campaign if he had to answer questions in two languages (and make sense) every day. Here's hoping that someday he'll master English as well as whatever he's speaking most of the time.

 

[tvstrip]

https://apnews.com/article/canada-election-debate-moved-hockey-game-3cfb1f764f16d2fab573ecff0e17d934

Doesn't get much more Canadian than that. And it wasn't even a playoff game, it was just to see if a team would make the playoffs.
Heck, we've changed liquor laws when big games were being played in different timezones, so this is consistent.

 

[tvstrip]

11 dead, dozens injured in ‘senseless’ act of violence at Vancouver’s Lapu Lapu festival
https://globalnews.ca/news/11151568/vancouver-lapu-lapu-day-festival-latest-news-tragedy/

Vancouver police confirmed on Sunday morning that 11 people were killed and dozens more injured when a man drove an SUV into a crowd at the Lapu Lapu Day festival in Vancouver on Saturday night.

Condolences to the Filipino community. Just incomprehensible as to why anyone would want to target them.

 

[DrakeM]

11 dead, dozens injured in ‘senseless’ act of violence at Vancouver’s Lapu Lapu festival
https://globalnews.ca/news/11151568/vancouver-lapu-lapu-day-festival-latest-news-tragedy/



Condolences to the Filipino community. Just incomprehensible as to why anyone would want to target them.

Agreed. Not to overgeneralize, but in my experience, Filipinos are some of the happiest people I know.

 

[tvstrip]

@DrakeM out of curiosity, how do you predict things will turn out today?

 

[Little Red Wagon Repairman]

Is the suspect Kai-Ji Adam Lo?

https://www.livemint.com/news/world...al-tragedy-that-killed-11-11745819526112.html

Kai-Ji Adam Lo is a 30-year old resident of Vancouver. He reportedly has a history related to mental health issues.
After ramming an SUV through a crowd at a Filipino community festival in the western Canadian city, Canadian prosecutors have charged him for killing 11 people aged between 5 and 65 and injuring dozens. He faces eight counts of second-degree murder, including more charges anticipated.

 

[DrakeM]

@DrakeM out of curiosity, how do you predict things will turn out today?

If I had to bet, I'd say a slim Liberal majority, but I really don't thing we'll know until late in the night. The vote in BC may make the difference.

Regardless of what I predict, get out and vote everybody! Unless they've changed the law, every vote results in dollars sent to the political party you voted for. If I remember right, that was part of the tradeoff to help avoid US-style big money campaigns.

 

[DrakeM]

	Lib.	Cons.	B.Q.	N.D.P.	Green	Total
Leading (Seats):	169	144	22	7	1	343
% of votes:	43.7%	41.3%	6.3%	6.3%	2.4%	100.0%

Well, I was almost right. The Liberals fell three seats short of a majority - should make for an interesting parliament. The NDP was almost wiped out and their leader lost his seat (he resigned as leader). While the Conservatives did make gains it wasn't enough and their leader failed to win his seat. I couldn't understand why late in the campaign, he started making Trumpish promises (eliminate the single-use plastic ban, remove the electric car mandate). Clearly it didn't work and maybe it cost him his seat too.

 

[tvstrip]

Unless they've changed the law, every vote results in dollars sent to the political party you voted for. If I remember right, that was part of the tradeoff to help avoid US-style big money campaigns.

I believe the rule is that if a candidate gets a certain % of the vote, they get reimbursed for a proportional amount. But if they don't meet that minimum threshold, they get nada. Which makes sense because it deters jokers like this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_Ballot_Committee

Supposedly this was the reason PP's election results were one of the last to be finalized, because the vote count took longer than normal.

 

[tvstrip]

	Lib.	Cons.	B.Q.	N.D.P.	Green	Total
Leading (Seats):	169	144	22	7	1	343
% of votes:	43.7%	41.3%	6.3%	6.3%	2.4%	100.0%

Well, I was almost right. The Liberals fell three seats short of a majority - should make for an interesting parliament. The NDP was almost wiped out and their leader lost his seat (he resigned as leader). While the Conservatives did make gains it wasn't enough and their leader failed to win his seat. I couldn't understand why late in the campaign, he started making Trumpish promises (eliminate the single-use plastic ban, remove the electric car mandate). Clearly it didn't work and maybe it cost him his seat too.

PP was running a tumpian-style aggressive campaign against JT and it worked wonders. The problem is that it worked TOO well, and when JT was booted out, carney's rise coincided with the increase in tump rhetoric. The CPC should have realized they needed to pivot and distance themselves from the orange oaf, but failed horribly. I think removing the EV mandate and plastic straw ban are fine (and probably would have been popular if they were introduced earlier), but his continued use of terms like "woke agenda" and "liberal media" made him waaay to similar to tump for comfort.

 

[tvstrip]

Judge declares accused in fatal Quebec daycare bus crash not criminally responsible
https://www.ctvnews.ca/montreal/on-...-daycare-bus-crash-is-criminally-responsible/

A Quebec Superior Court judge has declared a man not criminally responsible for killing two children and injuring six others when he drove a city bus into a Montreal-area daycare in 2023.
Justice Éric Downs on Tuesday accepted the joint conclusion from the Crown and the defence that Pierre Ny St-Amand was unable to discern right from wrong at the time of the fatal crash.
Psychiatrists for the Crown and the defence both concluded Ny St-Amand was likely experiencing psychosis on the morning of Feb. 8, 2023, when he drove the bus into a daycare in Laval, Que., killing four-year-old Jacob Gauthier and a five-year-old girl named Maëva, whose family name is covered by a publication ban at the request of her parents.

I hate hearing judicial decisions like this. Yes, you need mens rea for a crime, but the evidence still showed he had the mental capacity to aim specifically for a daycare. It's not like he was in a trance and blacked out at the wheel - he was able to control the bus and targeted the daycare

“There’s been a lot of emphasis on trauma between the ages of zero and five, the defence is all about that,” Mélanie Goulet, a mother of one of the survivors, told reporters outside the courtroom. “But it’s paradoxical because our children also experienced trauma (in that age range) … what does that mean for their future?”

This is a good point - so much consideration is given to the childhood trauma of the killer, but what about the surviving kids who are certainly going to have PTSD for the rest of their lives.

While true that this doesn't mean he walks free, it does mean there is the possibility that if he gets deemed "rehabilitated" after treatment, he could be released without a criminal record.

What is truly scary is that the Vancouver killer is also known to have mental health issues - and what might happen if he argues the same case.

 

[tvstrip]

Here's that one riding which was decided by 12 votes.

In Canadian terms, that means that if a single hockey shift (+coach) changed their vote, the winner here would have been different.

 

[tvstrip]

Apparently some people call them "Cobra Chickens"
...and for good reason