The YouTube channel Street Politics Canada is, by its own description, an “independent news organization that aims to cover unfiltered news.”
“Unlike other news organizations,” it writes, “we are clear and upfront about our biases.”
Since April 2022, it has published approximately 600 YouTube videos catering to an audience of Canadian conservatives, nearly all of which take aim at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. These typically consist of news clips, still photos, and basic motion graphics, accompanied by a voiceover relaying arguments and information gleaned from an assortment of Canadian sources. Titles include “Worst Prime Minister In History Gets Booed By Canadians” and “WATCH!! Trudeau Gives UNHINGED SPEECH After Protestors HECKLE him AGAIN!!” Thumbnail images often compare the prime minister to Hitler.
Hey, so this topic was near and dear to me so much so that I would follow every development, even in committee. So when it all fell apart and we lost a chance at ER it really used to grind my gears to see Trudeau get all the blame. It grinded my gears so bad that I would write long responses detailing the history to anyone that would listen. I’ve probably written a complete history of the damn thing 15 times.
Unfortunately, the narrative I tell wasn’t widely covered in media, at least not in one long form piece, and would need to be pieced together from multiple news articles and , of course , some is just my opinion.
So, I thought I would try something new here, since I don’t really have time to retell the history and find a bunch of sources (sources you are right to ask for)… I asked GPT4 to evaluate an older l, shorter, post of mine for factual accuracy, and give sources. You can read the evaluation here :
https://chat.openai.com/share/2c655851-b754-447d-b057-b869f4a9c119
I think GPT did an alright job finding sources for me, all things considered.
I appreciate your engagement as a citizen.
It absolutely was a mistake to surrender control of the committee. If opposition doesn’t like it then they don’t like FPTP.
They did undertake consultations (by setting up a compromised committee), but they didn’t take action.
I do concede that the Liberal Party is more to blame than Trudeau himself. I don’t think he was willing to fight the party hard enough.
No they didn’t take action, but I’m not sure what action they could have taken that anyone would have been satisfied with. They could have implemented the committee reccomendations (If Trudeau had forced them to), but that had big problems, not the least of which was that a referendum (including developing of the question) would not have been finished before the next election. They could have ignored the referendum bit, and implemented some proportional system, but the NDP didn’t name a specific proportional system and besides that the LPC official party policy at the time was for STV/Ranked ballot or for a consensus option, but no concensus came out of committee. On top of all that you might remember that the ISG (independent Senate group) , didn’t form a majority in the Senate until 2019, in 2016 /2017 when this all went on the CPC was still a big enough Senate caucus to block ER if they didn’t like the terms, and the CPC didn’t consider their senators independent.
Referendum:
Question 1: Given the findings of recommendations of the Electoral Reform committee which of these electoral systems should be used in the next federal election:
A STV
B MMP
C Party List (opposed by the committee)
(No option for FPTP because the FPTP system has already chosen a change)
Question 2: Should unelected bodies like the senate be able to obstruct the implementation of an electoral system chosen by referendum
Yes
No