Mostly partisan propaganda. The "Canada is broken" slogan is by no means organic; it is a carefully executed propaganda piece. The conservative leader is very good with punch lines and communication in general (and is maybe a bit too proud of it - e.g. he has a "Justinflation" plaque in his office; a term that he coined).
There are problems and people want them fixed. That is always the case. In a short couple of years Canada will suddenly not be broken anymore, as everyone will forget the slogan. Then in a few more years the next opposition will decry how awful things are, etc. It is all very predictable and clear.
I feel like its sentiment like this why the liberal party is heading for a historic collapse.
"Everything is fine, just cancel disney+"
Like young people are struggling... really badly and it seems like the government has done everything they can to make it worse.
Most people I've met really don't Like Pierre Pollieve (myself included) but to say the current governments ineptness is propaganda is actually insane.
Well, that wasn't my comment at all. I was specifically stating that the "Canada is broken" rhetoric is largely propaganda. That is very different from saying "everything is fine".
Propaganda? I am the only one of my friend group with a house at 30 years old. Most have completely given up on home ownership, we just registered a 62B$ deficit and homelessness is the worse it's been in my living memory. Universities are balancing their budget by pumping their foreign student numbers and hospitals are so deep in the red access to a specialist for anything non life threathening like a dermatologist or allergologist puts you on a 22 months waiting list even with a physician recommandation...
Not sure what you definition of broken is, but considering our tax rate we are well within our rights to call it broken.
Society is fundamentally not serving the prosperity of its younger generations. That is true in both the US and Canada. The wealth transfer upwards across generations is a breakdown of the social contract.
Millenials and younger have a great point, even if they articulate it poorly, and are being completely ignored but can't be for much longer. These demographics are just now coming into their political agency...
Your comment and the sibling comment touch on more or less the same issue - "what does 'broken' mean?".
We all agree there are problems, but does that justify saying "Canada is broken"? You start by saying that the US shares an issue with Canada. So is the US also broken? The sibling comment mentions other social and financial problems. Can we categorically say that a specific country is "broken" if it faces those issues?
From my perspective, calling a country "broken" is a very categorical statement, bringing to mind failed states, coups etc. I'm sure (or rather, hopeful) that we can all agree this isn't the case of Canada. When people say "broken" in this context, it is much more in the sense of "my car has a broken fuel line" than a commentary on how Canada is a Libya-style failed nation-state.
So in essence, "Canada is broken" is really "things are less good than they could or should be". That is the essence of my initial post - there are problems, yes; but the slogan is mostly inaccurate, ergo propaganda.
The "Canada is broken" people would also benefit from broader perspectives. I've lived most of my life in a developing country in the global south, so living here and seeing your definition of "broken" is a bit bewildering. I haven't lived here long enough to have seen how wonderful things were in the past decades, though, so who knows.
I do think the "Canada is broken" slogan works because there are some concerning issues and trends, but people need to realize they're decades-old trends that present politicians had little to do with.
I worry about Canada, but I don't care much about Trudeau's involvement, nor do I think any politicians in the race can do much about it.
It's tricky. I don't want to contribute to propaganda at all, in part because I believe it's manufactured by and serves the conservatives primarily, and I don't see their leader as anything close to a solution. Yet I don't want to pretend things are fine. Our economy doesn't look like it's on the right track, and the underpinnings of it seem to be corroding and failing. We're a very extractive, resource-intensive economy with very few new ideas, very few inventive or innovative programs or people, and little potential for making sweeping changes.
So, broken? Not really, and not more than most places. Canada is still incredible in so many ways. But on a good track? Utilizing our potential? Will my kids experience as healthy of an economy and society as I did at their ages? It doesn't seem like it, no.
I think it is a big deal. In many countries, you see a centre politician do some very normal thing that gets disingenuous outrage from the right solely with the intention (and effect) of dragging the Overton window over. From there, it is lather, rinse, repeat. The biggest reason for this is because capital has most of the power, most of the news outlets and capital is, of course, conservative.
When things do swing the other way, it is muted. Can you say Biden is more left than Obama? Were Harris' policies to the left of Biden's? Is Starmer's labour party more left than Corbyn's? On the whole, no.
The ONE dreadful thing the Liberals did was to renege on their promise of electoral reform. All Westminster-style Parliaments are done a disservice by using First-past-the-post. Trudeau campaigned on replacing the system with proportional representation, but incumbents in Westminster governments will never change the system that made them win.
Most people turn to the Carbon Tax as an example, but the Carbon Tax is implemented in such a way that the average family receives MORE in quarterly rebates than what they PAY in Carbon taxes; it's only those with very high incomes who come close to losing money from the tax[1].
Then they'll point to the pandemic and tell you that the worst thing we've ever done as a nation is ask people to get vaccinated and wear a mask during a time where a (not actually) unprecedented virus was rampant. And somehow the virus is the incumbent's fault.
After that you'll be told that healthcare is crumbling under Trudeau. Healthcare in Canada is a provincial responsibility, and the vast majority of provinces (eg Alberta) are run by right-wing governments looking to profit from private healthcare, so are employing a starve-the-beast strategy to make private healthcare look attractive.
And then some particularly weird people will tell you he isn't tough enough on trans people.
What’s dreadful is the rising cost of living and lack of affordable housing, which he failed to address. Moreover he doubled immigration during a time when the average Canadian was struggling to keep up with rising expenses.
I’m pro-immigration but not at an unsustainable rate. Housing construction was not keeping up.
Trudeau pushed beyond the limits of pro-immigration policy. If it was just conservative propaganda, the liberals wouldn’t be looking at a potentially historic election loss based on current polling.
That said, I don’t think conservatives will fix anything.
The immigration system we use today was set up by Harper. I'm an immigrant myself, having moved here on a Harper scheme, but under Trudeau.
You are absolutely right that this wasn't addressed by the current government, but it is a policy of the previous one. The only reason he alone is being blamed is because he happened to be in charge for a very long time.
It is likely to remain unaddressed satisfactorily under PP, too, since landlords benefit from immigration (especially high turnover immigration) and his primary interest is landlords and business owners.
This is a symptom of FPTP-based Westminster governments. If we had a more equitable electoral system, the blame can be more appropriately distributed and - even better - the issues can be addressed more efficiently.
> The only reason he alone is being blamed is because he happened to be in charge for a very long time.
No, he was in charge when it got bad. A policy that doesn't harm the country one decade can harm the country the next. And it did, so the one who chose not to repeal it, and rather to make it much worse, gets blamed.
Asking as a non-Canadian: What do you think he could have done that would fix these issues? If there is a clear path, why is it not politically attractive?
Universities have been abusing the temporary student visa as an income stream. The universities are awash with temporary foreign students, being charged higher tuition fees than domestic students. Partly this is greed, but it's also because funding for post-secondary has been getting cut in most provinces. BUT AGAIN - post-secondary funding is a provincial issue, not something the federal government (ie Trudeau) can do much about.
Alberta, for example, cut post-secondary funding, so the universities in Alberta turned to foreign students to make up the shortfall. This increased rental demand A LOT.
The issues were self created by skyrocketing the immigration rates / TFWs.
All they had to do was .... nothing, just keep the system as it was.
With that it seems like there has been a lot of heavy lobbying by companies built on low wage employment to deflate wages across the country. And it worked!
They rapidly expanded the LMIA program which provisions visas for primarily low income work.
Additionally they realllly expanded the international student visa pool, without actually checking who they were granting visas to.
The result was that pretty much non existent colleges were created with the sole goal of allowing people to pay for a backdoor to try and get PR without high level education, skills or even language proficiency.
Lastly there used to be a cap on visas issued based an unemployment rate of 6% they removed that cap so despite unemployment being up to around 10% in major cities they are still granting tons of visas.
So yeah... They really went out of their way to expand the visa program as fast as possible with very little oversight.
Additionally in terms of actual background checks, those seemed to go out the door as Canada in the past few years has given PR to a number of people who are actively wanted terrorists as part os Isis and other terror groups
- housing costs have skyrocketed and econmic growth has been lackluster
-- more importantly liberals have failed to articulate a convincing plan on this
- conservatives have been wildly succesful in the polls,causing the liberal party to fragment internally, which just further makes them look like they dont know what they are doing.
- trudeau has been in power a long time, people want change
- across the globe incumbants are having problems.
In terms of the grandparent, i don't really think there is much damage. I guess there is a high budget deficit. Not sure what that poster is referring to.
