this post was submitted on 18 Feb 2026
81 points (98.8% liked)

Canada

11581 readers
742 users here now

What's going on Canada?



Related Communities


🍁 Meta


🗺️ Provinces / Territories


🏙️ Cities / Local Communities

Sorted alphabetically by city name.


🏒 SportsHockey

Football (NFL): incomplete

Football (CFL): incomplete

Baseball

Basketball

Soccer


💻 Schools / Universities

Sorted by province, then by total full-time enrolment.


💵 Finance, Shopping, Sales


🗣️ Politics


🍁 Social / Culture


Rules

  1. Keep the original title when submitting an article. You can put your own commentary in the body of the post or in the comment section.

Reminder that the rules for lemmy.ca also apply here. See the sidebar on the homepage: lemmy.ca


founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] RaskolnikovsAxe@lemmy.ca 0 points 10 hours ago (2 children)

There are very real reasons why someone would vote for Carney Liberals over Poilievre Conservatives, and indeed liberals over conservatives in general. It's intellectually dishonest and frankly does a disservice to yourself to overlook or dismiss these simply because you don't understand them.

For example, marginal harm matters. Even if both parties serve capital, they’re not identical in courts, rights, climate policy, labor enforcement, etc. Also, time horizons matter. “Build the NDP” is a long-term project; “prevent a worse 4 years” is a short-term project and there is little doubt that Carney is the best person for the short term project (and perhaps the best person for economic restructuring in general). Most people are capable of rationally doing both short term and long term planning and decision making. And also, finally, coalitions in our government are a reality. In Canada, minority/parliament dynamics make “vote + apply pressure” a real lever. Treating all “lesser evil” as pure self-sabotage ignores that. Many Liberal voters can acknowledge the value of the NDP while also acknowledging their shortcomings. Many Liberal voters have voted NDP in the past when it made sense strategically.

[–] Adderbox76@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 hours ago

And also, finally, coalitions in our government are a reality. In Canada, minority/parliament dynamics make “vote + apply pressure” a real lever.

A-fucking-men to that. It frustrates me to no end that people (conservatives) don't understand that that's precisely how a minority goverment is supposed to function.

You'd watch Pierre Poppinfresh get on his stump about "collusion" between the NDP and the Liberals like it's some kind of conspiracy when in reality it's just how shit gets done. Negotiation and compromise.

The conservative party (at least those that are on the MapleMAGA spectrum) have a binary view of governning; if they're not the ones in power, they would rather not contribute to the government by negotiating and having a hand in shaping policy, because doing so would give the Liberals a "win" and that is anathema to a modern hard-C Conservative.

So instead of actually actively taking part in government, they stump around shouting at the other parties that do.

[–] Soup@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago

And how is the NDP supposed be built if we keep not voting for them? Are they supposed to just do a bunch of work for free for a few decades? They basically already have, and they simply got loss of official party status as a reward for that.

The Liberals aren’t just boring, they’re actively harmful. I don’t want Poilievre anywhere near power either but I’m not so naive as to believe that this battle is over, or even progressing, just because we sacrificed our values again. They’ve become very close to the conservatives we were all supposed to be afraid of back in 2021, and their trajectory is that they’re getting worse, not better. If the Liberal voters are so wise, should they not be acutely aware of this fact?

You even admit that coalitions work and, I imagine, understand that the NDP used their leverage to get Canadians things that we needed when the Liberals weren’t going to on their own. They fight for us even when they aren’t in full control. How are they supposed to form a coalition without having any seats?

It’s always “now is not the time” with you lot. It’s cowardly and weak. You’re right that it’s going to take time, so we better start now if we want to see any change in the future. Yes, it will suck for a moment, but do you really believe that the solution is to make endless excuses every single election cycle?