Th argument for notwithstanding was that it would be used in matters of extreme importance, and in a thoughtful and limited way.

Now it’s being wielded by the right to push policy that feels good to vengeful idiots with no consideration if it would lead to good outcomes. And because Notwithstanding now framed as a left/right matter it will be impossible to get rid of.

So now we’re in a situation where in each election from now until the end of time, we have to convince a clickbait-hungry media and a population distracted by slogans and shiny objects that boring nerdy shit like notwithstanding is something that they must pay attention to.

This fucking sucks.

The nuance I’d add is that while free markets are efficient, serving the public good is more important than the purest efficiency.

As an example, an unrestricted free market incentivizes the development of monopolies. This can be efficient and in the extremely long term these monopolies may fall to disruptive new entrants — but we humans live in the present and take little solace in the idea that the monopolist will someday get too bloated and fall. We just want to afford groceries!

So using competition bureau powers, we can restrict those markets. This may subtract from some extreme market efficiency but that’s an efficiency only the monopolist benefits from in a useful time frame.

The same principles are true in many other areas of the economy.

It’s impossible to maintain so many competing “top priorities”

Trying to do too much and failing the execution was Trudeaus downfall, and the next PM will have even more to deal with as top priorities.

Pulling in climate issues to new trade partnerships and new housing policies is a way to keep progress towards climate goals while also keeping focused on practical issues we need to solve in the short term.

The debate organizers failed Canadians with this half-baked format.

Zero fact checking. Zero effort to stop people talking over each other. Zero allowance for Carney to response to the unceasing bald face lies hurled by all three others.

Just a complete and utter waste of time. No one wants this garbage, this is why so many Canadians don’t bother to tune in. In no way would anyone seeing this be better informed than when they went in.

100% yes.

Maybe a competent manager of the status quo is the best we can hope for out of electoral politics for now, but sooner or later we’re going to need someone with big new ideas.

Well said. 100% agree.

These policies have abjectly failed with extremely harmful consequences.

Rent control is a very useful short-term bandage, to prevent a blip in the market from pricing people out of their homes.

What it isn’t, is a long-term solution inside a market system. After decades of rent control, developers have become largely disinterested in pursuing new rental units as it strictly limits the financial upside for them.

People who have been in these units get benefits, but with these benefits come serious drawbacks. Because rent control allows them to live beyond their means (relative to market prices), people in rent controlled units are stuck. They cannot find a comparable home if they want to move for a better job, to go to school or training elsewhere, to get out a bad domestic partnership situation, to find a different sized home because of life stage changes.

So yes I get that it feels good, and it absolutely helps in the short term. But it’s urgent that market prices come down as well. And while Carney is working on the market solution for this, the NDP or some other emergent group has ample room to come up with a comprehensive socialist alternative for this as well.

Capitalists do not have a monopoly on economic policies. Marx was an economist (amongst other things), for crying out loud. They can, they should, have a well-considered policy platform. For the love of gourd, NDP, don’t let a banker who works at a hedge fund have a better socialist policy on housing. It’s worse than embarrassing, it’s a goddamn travesty.

The challenge for the prairies is that we need to undo the brain rot that has told the people in those provinces their only future is in servicing American oil extractors.

There is a story for these provinces. The Norwegian or Saudi model of having the oil extraction being state-owned — and then using the profits to enrich the population — has been tremendously successful.

Alberta and Saskatchewan control these rights in their provinces and the centre and left should be screaming this from the hilltops. The oil and minerals are non-renewable and they should focus on getting value to enrich their own populations, not rush to produce at a discount in order to enrich American shareholders.

Perhaps it’s a failure of imagination on my part.

What I see from the NDP for example are extremely poorly considered centre-left policies that don’t go far enough but yet at the same time are ignorant of the economics they want to continue working within.

Take for example their proposal for national rent control. This is a disastrously ignorant policy proposal inside the context of a market economy as it will instruct the markets to halt any future construction of rental units.

Whereas I believe what they need to be doing is either what Carney is proposing, or giving up on the idea of markets entirely and using socialist tools to directly build the homes that the market has failed to build.

But I’ll take your advice to heart and listen if someone comes up with an alternative I’ve not considered.

If Carney gets a majority and is unable to substantively turned things around, I’m giving up on capitalism.

I sincerely believe we will never have a better candidate to represent the perspective of directed market economics. As the sportsball chant goes: “If he can’t do it, no one can.”

Which is separate from saying everyone should agree with it.

I’d love to see a similarly highly-competent socialist economics nerd leading the NDP in our future.

No, it doesn’t. There are two important differences.

PP is a devotee of the cult of the free market, that markets are best and all we need to do is remove restrictions on them. Carney believes markets should serve to people, that the end goal isn’t just naked efficiency but they we need market forces directed to get human-centric outcomes.

This is extensively covered in Carney’s 2021 book “Values” which I encourage everyone to read in order to understand the important differences in these approaches. Carney’s approach is an explicit rejection of the idiotic free market cultism of PP and his ilk.

Another critical difference is in competence. Carney is an experienced leader who was so well-regarded in his field that the UK selected him as the first ever non-local to run the Bank of England. Whereas PP can’t even manage to handle questions from friendly press, let alone lead something.

So no, they are not the same. You might still want to prefer an explicitly socialist approach that rejects markets entirely, which is a legitimate perspective for sure. But aside from the revolution party no one is really advocating that at the federal level.

Carney has taken questions from mainstream media, as well as from overly partisan hostile alternative media.

PP gets a friendlier media, does fewer questions, and still fails to do anything beyond tossing out well-rehearsed empty slogans and stammering out word salad.

Love that idea and I’m going to steal that when discussing that in the future

Gay marriage may be a good example of your argument, because I’m not sure how they’d be able to accomplish repealing that in law without using section 33.

But while things like anti-terrorism or “tough on crime” were harmful, if section 33 is not employed then we still have charter rights and these things can be challenged and overturned in the court system.

Which still sucks, a lot. But having PP saying that they’d jump to using the big stick of notwithstanding to support a bullshit American policy that failed there is a significant step worse. Because now we know for certain that they will use this stick, and no courts or opposition can stop them if they get power.

This is why I get prickly at the idea of people saying this is no big deal, they always do this. Which is what I inferred from your original comment, apparently falsely. Because this is big and new and will enable much more harm in a way that will be unstoppable.

So we must act with urgency to stop them before it can start. It was already important but now its a crisis — and yet our newsmedia focuses on inane stuff because talking about policies only policy nerds care about doesn’t get clicks and views.

Can you elaborate? I’ll admit I was living abroad during the Harper years, and I’m unfamiliar with any pledges to override our charter rights before. My understanding is that this type of open commitment to take away our rights is entirely new behaviour at the federal level.

The difference between “I don’t like their policy” and “these people will use section 33 to negate our fundamental rights” is a significant difference to me.

Respectfully, I don’t believe that’s something you want to say or joke about in a public forum.

That’s fair. I inferred a smug tone from it but text is a hard medium to convey or receive tone.

What I thought I recognized in your comment was an attitude I’ve participated in for at least a decade. Oh, I’m so smart, I’ll make some quip here to show that I’m way ahead of the curve here and you lot are just catching up. Look at me here on the sidelines, I’m so cool unlike you naive suckers trying to make a difference.

But I don’t know that was your attitude. If it helps, consider that I was speaking to my past self and not you.

Well said. With people like you out there helping to stop it, we will dump him and his maga ideology in the trash where it belongs

I believe this is the first instance where PP been open about using his weapon against our fundamental rights.

I mean yes we’ve long suspected it would be this way, and he’s hinted at it before.

But this is no time to be smug. Our rights are under attack, and most Canadians don’t even understand it’s happening. So I challenge you to change the attitude, and try to reach out to people who don’t understand section 33 and explain to them what’s at stake and why they must vote to stop this.