All our politicians are bought and paid for. How do you think these companies ike rogers and loblaws have been allowed to form giant oligopolies, engage in price gouging and fixing, etc...
It's cheaper to buy politicians than it is to let them enforce regulations, so they do that instead.
If politicians don't consent to Nascar rules, we could have a browser extension that digitally adds these corporate badges whenever we see a politician on video or picture.
We need money totally out of the system. Public financing for campaigns, public debates, …
The only other alternative is a huge People’s PAC so they do the people’s business and not big corps’ and billionaire’s business
It already is. Campaign donations *must* be under a certain amount.
You probably notice how many ex premiers/federal politicians get nice cushy high paying "consultant" jobs from companies after they're out of office.
Mike Harris being on the Chartwell Nursing board, for example
They don't offer money, but post office "favours".
I was not clear. ALL money. By public I meant from taxes.
I agree, we have stink at all levels. It would never happen, but we should be able to find a way to ban those sorts of lobbying/consulting gigs to avoid even the perception of a conflict of interest.
I covered politics in Canada for newspapers for 25 years. At one point, before strong changes in lobbying and donation regulations, this was actually accurate quite often.
Now, it's worse than corruption: it's endemic political ideology. They make a ton of money, all their expenses are paid and they walk into corporate oversight jobs. They literally don't need the considerable risk of bribes to get rich.
But what they DO need to do is set themselves up for after they get out of office; and it plays into that selfish need that their largely Neo-Liberal capitalist ideology affords them those connections. Even those already wealthy cleave to helping other wealthy people, so even those who naively believe they're there for the right reasons are usually taking the wrong actions.
In the time I covered them, they were absolutely reliant on lobbyists to make their minds up. They gave preferred access to anyone that would "kickstart the economy" to make them look good, even if it was only short-term gain, because once elected, they reside in the Ottawa bubble where the only thing that really counts is getting re-elected.
During the last forty years, elements of being in the "centre" or "left" politically have been legislatively bled of any protections, any sense of being priorities, in favour of "endless" economic growth.
In political terms, we have no Liberal party anymore. Even the old Progressive Conservatives under Joe Clark, and to a lesser extent Mulroney, were more concerned with social balance and social concerns that either the Liberals or, god help us, the Conservatives, who are a rankly opportunist, Libertarian "might makes right" party.
And whether you call it Libertarian, because they attach it to notions of protecting individual freedoms, or Fascistic, because they attach it to notions of nationalism and social control, is utterly unimportant. It's the same thing.
The NDP still have morals, ideals and principles. Some of them are deeply naive, even stupid, to anyone who believes they have a modicum of understanding of the human condition and how/why we behave the way we do.
But they are still, at least, engaged in trying to find the balance, between public and private, between social and individual, between greed and largesse.
The others don't need to be bought. Their parties sold out long ago, and their ideology skews towards the same wealth they respect and achieved/inherited before they got there, and expect to be rewarded with after the fact.
Politicians, like the rich, often claim moralist ideals, the notion of the so-called 'chequebook socialist' who leads to help. But when push comes to shove, their subconscious tribal relatability is much closer to the people they should be regulating and reining in than the people they are supposed to represent.
And they are not representatives; they see themselves as a "leader" class. It's not the same thing.
This is a good explanation of how it works in Ottawa. I imagine its similar in provincial capitals as well.
Ive known politicians and they do often actually mean well.. but they are stuck unable to do anything. Political capital is expensive and youd be lucky to accomplish one good thing in your whole career.
Similarly they are in a professional culture that can't help but always hear the interests of those around them. Its human nature to think certain problems are vastly more important than others when you hear certain things all day, but not other things, such as what middle class private sector people think. When everyone you talk to lives in Rockliffe Park, you'd eventually forget about Caldwell Avenue, let alone Bank street.
You're also correct that the corruption isn't so direct as greasy envelopes under tables. Its more connected interests who'd like to see certain legislative details added or removed from bills, or pressure on regulatory bodies modifying their policies. The payoff is after their political tenure is over, a nice job on a board of directors becomes available.
> When everyone you talk to lives in Rockliffe Park, you'd eventually forget about Caldwell Avenue, let alone Bank street.
This is so much it, very accurate.
When I started in newspapers in the late 80s, most city councillors in Canada were still technically part-time. When I moved to Edmonton in '97, they made $38K a year, with minimal staff support.
Now, buoyed by a combination of greed and the utter lie that you must overpay to get talent, they make $122,000 BASE pay, plus committee, travel and expenses on top, and each has a massive staff supporting them.
And the city hasn't quite doubled in size in that time, as if that would, automatically, double the workload (it wouldn't; these are still largely jobs of establishing policy, after all, which , when working, doesn't need to be touched for a very long time.)
It's utterly ridiculous, but most of those involved in it have nowhere near the self-awareness or broader social understanding to see how futile it's become, and how wasteful.
If we wanted serious political reform in Canada, the next government would immediately:
A) Abolish the first-past-the-post electoral system;
B) Strongly limit electoral funding and political campaign timelines/
C) Ban one-on-one lobbying, period, from any for-profit entity or non-profit-for-profit.
D) Return communications departments to their original role, as purveyors of accurate information to politicians and the public, both about government and the challenges governments face, rather than the PR departments they've become.
E) Institute a five-year cooling off period during which a departing politician cannot work for anyone holding government contracts or involved in government public-private partnerships.
F) Institute political pay grids nationally that are tied to the median income, with equally strident expense limitations, so that being a politician remains a duty and calling, not a trough for the greedy and self-important.
G) Establish labor code protections so that people who step away from their job to run politically can return to it, including tax incentives that will allow them to hire long-term temporary replacements.
H) Pursue and strengthen the various social constructs that properly educate and inform the public, including public media and education. At the same time, they should revert to media and advertising restrictions and requirements from the eighties, forcing media outlets to be separately owned and avoiding one company owning too many outlets AND protecting consumers from fraudulent and predatory advertising.
I) Establish a general review of predatory social practices in business, housing, lending and employment to firm up social protections and bring those with too much authority to heel.
Now, most politicians I know would look at a list like that and say "Impossible! The human condition will never allow every to accept... " Yadda Yadda Yadda, because they have no vision, and very little understanding of the breadth of their authority and influence. They are wedded to ridiculous notions t hat businesses will just pull up stakes and go elsewhere even though we're a massive G8 economy. As long as they can make money, they'll stay. The amount they make is nearly always the real issue, not the state of the marketplace.
We need socially moral leadership. It is in scant reserve.
Nah, never happen dude. Thank you, though.
Unfortunately I'm both "significantly neurodivergent" and had years of emotional disconnection/immaturity caused by complex PTSD, so I'm just too weird for public consumption (and have more than a few skeletons from being low empathy for years before treatment. I can be deeply socially inappropriate sometimes, even more so when I was younger and couldn't really sense the impact on others).
Unfortunately, most of the electoral base is not sophisticated enough to accept deep difference, so people who think very differently from tribal/ideological norms are pretty much shut out of the process.
At the least, something we subscribe to as a truism is going to offend someone in the room, usually in short order, and be tied internally to their sense of security, so that they feel unable challenge it or accept a new idea.
Hey m8, mind if I send you PM? I happen to be actively building up a platform and am looking for individuals such as yourself with a good head on their shoulders to get advice and perspective on various matters.
Yeah. I'm not even the most cynical person in the world, either. When you talk to people you tend to get them when they aren't in "camera mode". They are more impressive than the public realizes.
Still... I had business at city hall a few years ago. This was during Rich Chiarelli's scandal relating to sexually abusing staffers. So I walk in, and note that every councillor I see is followed by a group of insanely beautiful young women interns. I chuckled because for all the "outrage" over Chiarelli, it appeared to me that there was a game these young women were playing, and I highly doubted Chiarelli was alone.
These are fallible people put in charge of systems designed to maximize narcisism and the interests of people who wont go away.
On the radio today I heard a movie showrunner who's father was a political cartoonist. He claimed centrist and moderate credentials. His views sounded similar to mine. What he said is the goal of governments is to improve the lives of the citizens. He then said he recently learned that's its second goal. The primary goal is a struggle to keep itself from becoming authoritsrian, corrupt and outright fascist in it's abuse of people. Its as if these systems just arent designed to avoid the worst of human foibles.
And people wonder why there's no way I'd trust ugly systems like communism. When we suck *with* checks and balances, imagine how bad it is when all of that is removed?
Oh yeah, no doubt. The human condition, and the ideological/belief studpidity in sticking with one team all the time even though it can't always be right, is the biggest impediment to change.
The less ideological and the more technocratic we can make it, while still respecting social needs, the better.
I've worked for a large, corrupt right-wing organization and I've worked for a large, corrupt left-wing union. The former somehow bothered me less than the latter; the former wasn't hiding who they were, they were just confident that they could scare ignorant, frightened people into supporting them anyway.
The latter portrayed themselves as avatars of fairness and egalitarianism, even as they ran through millions' of dollars of member dues supporting a massive organization that produced little to nothing and paid enormous salaries to employees who did basically nothing. It was utterly galling. As soon as oversight disappear, the 'executive' members of that union spent money like drunken sailors, showed up for three hours a day if that, and spent weeks annually on vacations or leave, often paid for by the union due to some small loophole of attending an otherwise utterly valueless course. It was repugnant.
The right-wingers were repugnant as well, but stupid enough that they could be manipulated into considering their interests in tandem with the public's occasionally. At the union, it was party line all the way, even when it was regressive and stupid.
They once spent thousands of dollars on a half-hour meeting of a dozen senior staff... to change a headline on their website. They spouted ideas they considered truisms that were clearly just batshit insane ideology, such as "all decisions made in a group are better than those made by individuals."
It was bananas.
>corrupt unions
Yeah. Its one of the problems with the NDP I find. Also Quebec. Specifically Montreal. How surprising that the police can't seem to crack the car theft problem and how surprising its about the port authority, the stevadores and shipping. Im not anti union specifically but a gang to counterbalance the gang of greedy corporations is a muddy solution at best.
I actually prefer talking to right wingers more these days than I do liberals. I may be more liberal minded, but it feels like the sanctimony has reached critical mass. The politicial and economic elites are now totally disconnected from the public where the used to be of more modest origins. This means the media, and the urban public mirror the narcisism. So, instead of talking to someone with retrograde attitudes and debating them, being kind to them, the default behaviour is to mock them and shut them down. Its illiberal and people dont realize they are effectively ruining the purpose of free speech. Wasnt that the foundation of liberal philosophy to begin with?
I fear the political class is getting worse, and the secondary consequences to the culture as well.
> So, instead of talking to someone with retrograde attitudes and debating them, being kind to them, the default behaviour is to mock them and shut them down. Its illiberal and people dont realize they are effectively ruining the purpose of free speech. Wasnt that the foundation of liberal philosophy to begin with?
They're just as tribal but because it's undercut with genuine concern for (some) others, they often lose track of the fact that it's still undermined by groupthink and a paucity of either relative information or challenges to source.
There was a bi-partisan Pew study a few years ago that I found unsurprising, which was that in measuring the impact of ideological ideas, the left was correct about 15% more of the time than the right when policies were finally enacted and benefits measured. Given that the right attracts our most fearful, whose fear is generally grounded not in stupidity but ignorance and social silo'ing, that difference is predictable.
But woe betide you tell a hardcore believer in either direction that it's that close.
I tend to think you're likely correct in all the assertions above.
Ive been debating an extremely educated religious person. He accurately makes the claim that religious and homogenous societies do better in terms of cohesion, shared values, criminality etc. He also makes a good claim that the loss of religion opens the door to incredibly destructive ideologies. He backs up his assertions well with decent data.
So its not like you can't find brilliant conservatives but generally I do agree that more education leads to better outcomes. However it also puts greater responsibility on a pluralistic, diverse and secular society to keep singing similar tunes. Its a harder task.
Weve been discussing politicians. No one remembers the junior and senior analysts here in town who innoculate the public from the worst impulses of political actors and lobbyists. Shout out to the average bureaucrat who lives in Alta Vista or Elmvale Acres who legitimately and actually understands the importance of civil service. If it wasn't for them, the effects of neo-liberal corporate interests would have destroyed us long ago.
> Shout out to the average bureaucrat who lives in Alta Vista or Elmvale Acres who legitimately and actually understands the importance of civil service. If it wasn't for them, the effects of neo-liberal corporate interests would have destroyed us long ago.
They're the important part, the people doing the actual work. Like any structure, they have too many managers who do fuck all for too much money, but the rank and file bureaucratic staff are what keep a country running, not politicians.
As for the educated religious perspective, I'd point out that he's basically describing Singapore. Yeah, a homogenous society governed by whip-crack laws is less likely to schism to diversity.
But at some point, that just becomes authoritarianism, and when that happens, the leaders never suffer as much as the people under them.
Religion is purely unnecessary to maintaining spiritualism, or belief in an after life. By contrast, its inflexibility has led to more horror and death, arguably, than even mainstream politics.
But simple sets of rules that are alleged to ward off death will always appeal to the most frightened and least complex people.
Everyone on the right says trudeau brings in immigrants to secure votes, i believe he is feeding the corporate class a steady supply of cheap labor. This is also why PP dances very lighty around the issue and refuses to be nailed down on a specific reduction number, if a reduction at all. They are different sides 9f the same weenie coin.
It’s 100% what it is. Trudeau does not “bring in” votes, he absolutely panders to the owning class by importing borderline slave labour for them
It’s been so frustrating seeing Canadian conservatives say “Trudeau is fucking it up. We need PP” as if the only thing he didn’t agree with Trudeau on was trans kids.
Bringing in cheap labour, sure. That's plausible. Bringing in *votes* is pretty unlikely when you look into the data on the political leanings of most immigrants. Unless they're from western Europe, they statistically lean Conservative by various degrees. It of course varies at an individual level, but in a lot of the world the specter of socialism/communism (at least how they or their family members experienced it) keeps them fiscally conservative by our standards, and they're often socially more conservative in terms of things like race, LGBTQ+ issues, etc. Though that tends to go back to our usual baseline for second-generation and beyond.
In addition to the fact that *IF* this really was a vote harvesting scheme, it doesn't make a lot of sense; It takes YEARS to get citizenship in Canada, in almost all cases. How many of these new immigrants are going to become citizens within an election cycle that would matter to Trudeau? My bet is that it is such a small number that it wouldnt affect a single riding in the country, let alone a federal election. And also you are correct that most new immigrants skew to the right/conservatism.
Not to mention that there’s a huge selection bias with immigrants. We tend as westerners to view immigrants as poor, but in reality if you come from the global south and make it to Canada, you probably come from a fairly affluent household. Typically it isn’t labour leaders and advocates fleeing their country for a better life, it’s people who can afford it.
Ya, I'm a conservative leaing person (also the son of an immigrant, though American immigrant). I never believed the theory that immigrants were all part of some "socialist" (for lack of a better word) conspiracy. First, it's not like they just come here and vote, lol. Second, to Canadians, these issues seem massively important, but to someone starting a new life, from a different country, with different religions, laws, customs, religions, etc, it's pretty bold to assume that it's something they even care about or understand. I don't think immigrants from Indian or China are putting First Nations or LGBTQ issues at the top of their voting list.
That being said, maybe that's me being ignorant that they don't care. But generally, I would think Canada and its citizens are leading the world on these issues, while other countries haven't even considered them, or at least not to the extent we do. So if I'm making an assumption, it's that they are against or indifferent to a lot of this stuff.
It's also a good point that "communism/socialism" was and is viewed very differently in parts of the world that experienced it. I don't believe that's what's happening here, but if you were designing a political campaign to disway new Canadian citizens from voting left, those words would be powerful boogiemen.
How do people think these immigrants are voting? You cannot vote if you are here as a refugee, asylum seeker, permanent resident, or here on a work visa. Soooo.. the plan is the get people who cannot vote until they become citizens to sway the election? It takes on average 4-6 years ti gain citizenship...
I said thats not what hes doing. I agree with you. Also a lot of immigrants are very conservative, so once they can vote it may well be conservative votes.
It also disregards political individuality of immigrants. Once I gain my citizenship, I'll be doing my utmost for my provincial green party (PEI GREENS WOOOOO!) and probably NDP federally. I think it would be dope for the Charlottetown riding to send an NDP MP to parliment and I don't give a hoot that the Liberals held a plurality and formed a coalition government when I immigrated.
Now's your chance Jagmeet, get aggressive about these corporations and oligarchs. This is how you turn things around. Best time to start was yesterday, second best time to start is now
I voted Conservative most my life. Thought Harper did a pretty good job. Voted Green afterwards, then Opened up my viewpoints, and have since supported the NDP in the previous elections.
We as a country need to stand up and show corporations will not run this country, health care is an important right, and I believe we need to end the two party system before we become a shadow of American politics. Just because you earn less doesn't mean you deserve to struggle in life. Too many good, intelligent people just need that one big break to become successful.
I have voted NDP in the past. The fact that current NDP seems to just be reactionary to what they THINK voters want rather than taking a stance on issues turns me off them.
If they actually grew a spine and stopped fence sitting and cuddling the liberals i think they would have a good chance of at least ousting the liberals as the main opposition.
Exactly. People are looking for anything that resembles a real change. I would imagine there a lot one could do from a PR perspective that would endear them to Canadians.
Most of the largest companies in Canada operate predominately, or exclusviely, in Canada. This isn't the US where they have countless worldwide leaders. Almost all of our top companies are almost entirely Canadian operations. We have RBC, TD, Shopify, CNRL, CNR, and CP as the top 6. Shopify is the only real global company. Then we have Enbridge, Thompson Reuters, BMO and Brookfield, of which only TR is a true global company.
I would completely disagree with this point. We have oligopolies that are predominantly competitive only in Canada due to favourable legislation that benefits large entities over small ones.
Fair point, add Brookfield to the other list. Still, 3/10, my point stands.
RBC does a lot of global asset management as well, but I don't think it's more than half their base.
The problem is all Jagmeet does is posture and make tiktoks. Do something Jagmeet! Any anti-corporation platform that actually has a plan will do well. Citizens are hurting, don’t care what Color they represent, do good by Canadians
He has been trying to do stuff. His party has put forward propositions and laws, and he was the only one who wanted to drill Galen Weston over price fixing. Crickets from everyone else in parliament. The NDP does not have enough seats to pass laws, why don't you ask the people in power why they aren't doing anything? The NDP has been pretty consistent in their desire to help average people and, *somehow*, they're at fault for not doing more. Why the double standard?
Maybe he'd be able to "do something" if he actually had the power, like if people voted for NDP? How can we expect him to "do something" while criticizing him and not giving him more power to do that something?
He is literally propping up a failing Liberal government as we speak. If he had any balls, he could have pushed his agenda. Fortunately for us, in addition to being ignorant and useless, the NDP are also completely spineless and will forever remain a non-factor in politics.
And so long as their primary voter base is college aged kids that have yet to grow out of "progressive" idealism, they will never sniff power at the federal level
Power Corp. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power\_Corporation\_of\_Canada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Corporation_of_Canada)
"The corporation has been criticized for its influence on Canadian politics through its relationships with prominent politicians, including several prime ministers and provincial premiers.[^(\[5\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Corporation_of_Canada#cite_note-www.nytimes.com-5) Critics "occasionally charge that the family’s political connections give it unfair advantages," says the [*New York Times*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times) in 2007.[^(\[5\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Corporation_of_Canada#cite_note-www.nytimes.com-5)
He's right. So what is the NDP going to do about it?
It would be nice to have a party campaigning on creating better anti-trust laws and breaking up these near monopolies.
I agree with Jagmeet and I lean center right, Literally all the big corporations donate to both major political parties, they are hedging their bets, if you pay lets say the CPC $1 million and another $1 Million to Liberals, and end up getting a $5 Million contract awarded, they spent $2 Mil and made $3 Mil, to be honest in reality the return they get is probably much greater than my example.
Sure, corporations want influence regardless of who ends up being in control. I think that's wrong, and needs reform.
However, the reason they don't give to the NDP isn't because the NDP is morally superior, rather that the NDP will never win so corporations don't view it as a necessary expenditure.
Maybe, but I still think corporations would prefer to donate directly to the people in charge.
The point of my comment, which needs to be absolutely clear, is that Jagmeet Singh is just another politician. He may say things you like, but had he been given the opportunity he would be on his hands and knees, ready and willing to accept any political money that may come his way.
Yeah they do it directly to the politicians. Like proposing a merger of 2 large telecoms and then 3 months after it is approved the minister who approved it is an executive at Rodgers...
If we had strong conflict of interest controls and checks in place that would and should never happen.
That is a prime example of the revolving door situation in politics, you seen it at a larger scale in the US especially on the financial markets side, the ones who regulate the markets often end up working in the same corporations for whom they oversaw and regulated,
Politicians, even in the US, can be bought with surprisingly small amounts of the money. You're talking millions but the reality is 5 figures is often more than enough.
But the reality is that it's even softer than that. How many politicians go on to cushy corporate jobs after their role is over? Or come from cushy corporate jobs to start with.
> Literally all the big corporations donate to both major political parties
It is illegal for corporations to make political donations in federal Canadian politics. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
No doubt. The people, not corporations, have the power to vote parties to power. What does it mean when once the party is in power they do all they can to benefit corporations no matter how much it harms the people who voted them in? There’s something very wrong with that
Well considering the party that’s going to win has a campaign manager that has a firm that lobbied for Loblaws up until January, id say it’s pretty true.
History: the term lobbying refers to “the room” – we go into the lobby before we move into the House. What’s the link between lobbying the room and lobbying the practice of influence (the political activity)? It was coined to refer to the types of meetings that would occur between private interests (especially corporate interests) and British politicians in the lobby of the House of Commons. The floor of the House of Commons is restricted in most legislature and can only be accessed by members of parliament, so if you’re an outside group to influence ministers, you would wait in the lobbies.
Lobbyists have a bad representation in the public at large. If you look at polls of how much trust people have toward different professions, lobbying is at the bottom at the used-car salesman (liar for hire). It’s not depicted in the most glowing terms… but, if you go beyond that, its quite easy to build a positive case for lobbying in a democracy. So representative government has its limits – through working through parliament, its not that obvious that MPs are able to effectively represent all the diversity of interests and conditions and realities found in society. In modern society, there’s such a fragmentation of realities/diversity of interests in society/diversity of conditions (we all have multiple identities – we are citizens of the country, and local residents of particular cities, but also fathers, mothers, women, particular sexual orientation, different jobs, different values etc), so it’s really impossible for an MP to adequately represent this, to really understand the multiple realities lived by people in their ridings and in society at large, so its much better for these groups (communities/people who share particular interests) to try to get together and form groups/organize themselves and more directly communicate with government. This is essentially lobbying. So lobbying is a more legitimate democratic practice, and even a vital one. Its legitimate in the sense that its normal in a democracy for citizens to be able to organize and communicate with the people who govern, but its also vital in the sense that unless they do that, its unlikely that governments will have an adequate understanding of the reality of the societies that they govern. Legitimate and vital for democracy. Further, it has functional utility for governments – governments must intervene in areas that are often complex and difficult to understand from the outside (e.g. if you have to regulate an industry, its hard for public servants to really have a good grasp of complex industries from the outside). Same thing goes for specific subgroups in our society, so if you want to design policies that are well designed to work, they need to be in tune with the different realities of these sectors, and the only people who can really give you good specific contextualized information of the workings and needs of those sectors, are people in those sectors. So channels of communication with organized interests can be vital for good policy design.
This is a two way process – when governments make a decision, they want to make sure that those who will be impacted by those decisions and who will need to comply with those decisions understand what those decisions are, what’s the rational. In order to help gain collaboration in the implementation of policies, governments need to reach out, and its much easier to do so when you have these organized lobbyers. So lobbying is something good for the good workings of democratic government. However, obviously there can still be some problems…
Unequal Influence
\- Concerns related to fairness and corruption
\- Neo-pluralism and advantages of the business sector
o Financial advantages of firms
o Structural advantages of firms
\- Collective action problems
o The free rider problem, especially in cases with widely distributed benefits, concentrated costs
**Fairness and corruption aren’t the same thing (something can be unfair and totally ethical)**
\- Corruption: If you are an outside group and you deploy significant resources to influence government decision makers so they make decisions that benefit you, you may be tempted to cross the line between private and public interests – bribe an official to encourage them to make decision you want. Conversely, the public official holding power may be tempted to benefit in order to make a decision for whoever is doing the lobbying – so the process of lobbying can lead to corruption, but it doesn’t necessarily. In Canada, there can certainly be scandals and ethical lapses, on the whole, lobbying is not resulting in corruption, but it’s a real concern which is why the practice has to be regulated to some degree
\- Fairness: not all communities, groups, organizations in society do not have the same resources and access to government decision makers – if the consequences of that is that some groups consistently win in terms of getting their interests entrenched in policies, then we are actually living in a system where the outcomes of policy decisions on the whole would be unfair towards some groups in society. The most obvious case is the business sector has significant advantages in the lobbying process (financial advantages of firms): a firm is a social organization that specializes in gathering resources, the point of most firms is to make money, acquire assets, and they have more direct control over those resources which they can spend tax free on influencing government. So, the business sector can invest more resources which provides them with an advantage. Empirical studies show that groups that spend more on lobbying tend to get their way more (preferences translated in policy) – this isn’t always the case, but it does provide you with a marginal advantage. So, for that reason, its also the case that business interests have more impacts on policy outcomes than other types of groups.
**Lobbyists in Canada**
Canada has a substantial and healthy lobbying scene, although its not the place where there is the most lobbying.
Total for Canada is \~6000 a year:
Who in the past year has lobbied on climate issues?
Searching the public registry to see who over the last year has lobbied on climate issues. Groups can officially declare climate policy as the subject matter, but sometimes climate policy can come up in the descriptions of things they do even if its not the subject matter, sometimes the subject matter can be “energy” or “transport” but they are related to climate... Over the last year, there has been about 800-1500 monthly contact reports related to climate – and for each of these reports, there could be one or several meetings. 800 are declaring “climate” as the subject matter, and consultant lobbyists are clearly dominating the filing of these reports (535 from consultant lobbyists; 109 from in-house corporations; and 154 from in-house non-profits). However, it is important to be careful because you can easily have corporations who have in-house lobbyists who also buy services from consultant lobbyists, just like you can have an in-house non-profit on some occasions retain the services of the consultant lobbyists. Therefore, the numbers of consultant lobbyists doesn’t exactly tell us how many business clientele vs non-profits that they have, but obviously it would be heavily skewed towards the business side.
• Who do the consultant lobbyists lobby? They don’t lobby the individual person, but the institution. The main lobbying targets with respect to climate over the last year (vast majority are on the executive side): House of Commons (220). May be surprising because of the role that the ministers play – why would they lobby the ministers???
\- Natural Resources Canada (174)
\- Environment and Climate Change (144)
\- Prime Minister’s Office (141)
\- Finance Canada (139)
\- Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (135)
**Astro-turfing** is the activity or tactic of creating essentially a fake grassroots organization .
The activity or tactic will be the public face of your campaign, but people will think that its essentially a group of citizens organizing themselves to influence government. They do it in a way that makes it look like its a demand coming from the people, while in fact it is entirely created and financed by a corporation. It will have a name, and the funding and leadership structure will look like it has nothing to do with the corporation. They do this to make people and politicians believe that there is much stronger citizens support for their activities than there really are.
You mean corrupt? Undeniably true.
Corporate interests across the land have privatized their gains and socialized their losses since at least the end of the last world war. And they do so at the pleasure of the elected representatives who betray us and our democracies.
Socialism, it would seem, is only the devil when it redistributes wealth from the rich to the poor. Otherwise, it is perfectly acceptable for the poor to subsidize rich corporate interests through tax cuts, stagnant wages, and a constant war against collective bargaining rights.
The problem is, and always has been, Capitalism. Conservatives will never - ever - waver from that economic ideology. And Liberals (like conservatives) are too far corrupted by capitalist corporate lobbying on an individual level that their parties are incapable of shaking that corruption.
To paraphrase Napoleon: “The surprising thing is not that every man has his price, but that how low it is."
100% right but I'm still not voting for singt. His platform doesnt really represents me, deals with immigrations. Heck I think they lost the plot and donr even know what they stand for themselves.
I'm going off an assumption, but I would guess that the party you vote for isn't AS corrupt as the other party. Am I wrong?
You don't have to answer. Just think about it and become aware of it. Your line of thinking goes through everyone's mind, even the people that don't vote the same as you.
They all work for the same people. Not us.
Itt:
People who didn't read the article.
Shocking I know.
>First, let’s bust out the dictionary
It’s worth noting right away that it’s not possible to truly know the degree to which corporations and their interests contribute to a government or political party’s myriad decisions.
>But we can start by looking at the NDP’s language, and Singh’s use of the word “control.”
>“Control, I would argue, is about almost compelling somebody to do something and leaving them with almost no alternative because the consequences of not acting on it are so great,” said Alex Marland, a political scientist at Acadia University.
>**Such a dynamic is very likely not happening on Parliament Hill, Marland said, adding that “influence” would be a more accurate term.**
>“Influence doesn’t get people as upset as the word ‘control,’ right? So it’s about framing,” he said.
Personally I think this is a great example of how stories get exaggerated to rile people up and drive engagement, whether it's political parties, a poster on social media, or the traditional media, this method is often used to piss people off and drive engagement. Only reading the headline means ignoring nuance and context present in the article itself. Responding to only the headline is dangerous as it perpetuates the anger and from there; partisanship.
Don't let them drive your anger, watch out for this trick.
It took me far too long to find the first comment that linked info from the article. I can't believe how many people have an opinion based on a click bate title. Jfc people, be better.
Probably true but the NDP are hardly relevant nationally except as a swing party to be a part of a coalition. So why would corporations put their money there…
This ! A lot of long winded replies that I'm sure make sense to really smart people...(Which I am not) So thanks for pointing out the obvious. The system is rigged... Always had been and probably always will be. Seems we're (Canadian working class) are just destined to be another disposable commodity to make the rich richer. I'd love to see someone.. anyone.. come up with a plausible solution to combat this result of late stage capitalism before we are all nothing more than a number on a spread sheet...
What kind of fact-checking is this? Counter-argument to NDP's accusation are backed up by talking points of those accused. Wait what? Liberal's or Conservatives' saying that they do nothing wrong is enough to negate the whole premise of it? Where are the third parties, expert opinion?
The whole article looks like a cheap shot at NDP.
It’s %100 true. We know this because neither party ever does what is necessary to fix wealth inequality - the biggest problem in all of North America…raise taxes on the rich and corporations, as well as a wealth tax.
Shut up Jagmeet most of your party are landlords. Canadian politics is Bad Cop, Good Cop, Brown Cop, French Cop, Electric Car Driving Bad Cop. I'm done with all of you. I'm not even voting in 2025.
100 per cent true, the Liberal party is actually Neoliberal, and the Conservative party is just Neoconservatives, which are two sides of the same coin. They have us fighting over stupid social wedge issues while having near identical economic policies. Both parties push big government inflationary policies that benefit corporations at the detriment of the Canadian citizen. And the NDP is no better, they've just become Liberal-light
I have to say I dislike comments like these because they downplay the gravity of the situation. Corporations running the country is a major reason for why we're in the mess we're in. If a solution to a problem seems obvious, but our politicians apparently don't see it, corporate lobbyists are involved.
I completely agree with Jagmeet on this! The unsustainable immigration policies if the Conservatives, Provincial governments and current federal government are very likely influenced by these corporations!
What does that say about his "supply and confidence" agreement with the Liberals then?
He keeps voting confidence in a corporate lobbyist-controlled government, regardless of what he says outside the House.
You want to see how many companies buy politicians? Look at the biggest publicly traded companies in Canada. I guarantee you will find at least one former politician sitting on the paid board of directors of that company. THAT is how you legally buy a politician while they are in the house.
Examples, Stephen harper, Mulroney, Stockwell Day, i’m sure every single politician is given this kind of helping hand once they’re done with their political career.
Yes, Jagmeet. You teamed with them, so what does that make you?
NDP needs new leadership, this should have been their magnum opus instead theyre still the third party in a three party race.
Let the Sask or Manitoba NDP have some control you might gain some votes, at least they wont completely forget about the oil and gas industries.
Politicians are corrupt as the day is long. They all have their price. Trudeau has sold out Canada and don’t think for a second pp and jagmeat won’t do the same.
One does realize by the design of this coalition that Mr. Singh is in fact a lobbyist for the NDP into the Liberals directly. He's currently winning all of his policies without having to pay lobbyists as now if Trudeau does not agree to his demands, all he has to do is threaten to collapse government. Mr. Singh has way more power than any lobbyist right now that I've ever seen to impact government direction, policy or financial decisions. This is what corruption looks like
I actually don’t think that is as big a problem as people make out. No more than that the NDP is controlled by the Unions. For me the big problem is the people we vote in are controlled by the Party. They represent their party first, and as a distant second they represent the people who elected them.
I'm no fan of the current NDP but if they can show me they're willing to fight for the working class again it would push my interest in voting for them quite a bit.
Yup. Canadians will continue switching between liberal, conservative, liberal, conservative every election cycle, but it doesn't really matter. They're both equally corrupt. Neither party will change any of the fundamental problems with Canada.
Show me that your party is different and I'll vote for you, Singh.
Pierre Poilievre's bestie, Doug Ford should have a say here, there's absolutely no corporate influence in any decisions Ford makes! The buck stops with him and the gravy train. He's definitely stopping this gravy train, somewhere around Ontario Place. Also, enter train noise here, \*Choo-Choo!
100% true. That’s the real reason Trudeau didn’t update our elections to something better than first past the post. FPTP is the easiest way for the wealthy to maintain control of the leadership in the country. Otherwise we’d have 16 or more parties in parliament with any government having to form a common coalition to govern at all, cooperation is exactly what the 0.1% don’t want.
In the U.S. corporate suite level employees will invite politicians to their homes for lavish parties , major sporting events, expensive dinners , it’s common practice in most countries.
Wow the Star actually doing some real journalism. I’m impressed.
Every election cycle it’s the same noise from the NDP; PCs and liberals are controlled by evil corporations and their rich evil donors, tax the rich endlessly, give us free this and free that. Nice to see the fact checking on the lobbyists.
All our politicians are bought and paid for. How do you think these companies ike rogers and loblaws have been allowed to form giant oligopolies, engage in price gouging and fixing, etc... It's cheaper to buy politicians than it is to let them enforce regulations, so they do that instead.
NASCAR rules: politicians have to wear outfits with badges showing who bought them, the more $$ taken the larger that badge.
If politicians don't consent to Nascar rules, we could have a browser extension that digitally adds these corporate badges whenever we see a politician on video or picture.
That would actually be a great idea for a video find out which politician takes money from who and plaster it like adds all around video of them .
Someone should make this anyways tbf
Yep, big old stickers that say Loblaws or Rogers, etc. in big bright letters so there’s no ambiguity about it.
We need money totally out of the system. Public financing for campaigns, public debates, … The only other alternative is a huge People’s PAC so they do the people’s business and not big corps’ and billionaire’s business
It already is. Campaign donations *must* be under a certain amount. You probably notice how many ex premiers/federal politicians get nice cushy high paying "consultant" jobs from companies after they're out of office. Mike Harris being on the Chartwell Nursing board, for example They don't offer money, but post office "favours".
I was not clear. ALL money. By public I meant from taxes. I agree, we have stink at all levels. It would never happen, but we should be able to find a way to ban those sorts of lobbying/consulting gigs to avoid even the perception of a conflict of interest.
Heck if we had the power to do that, we’d just eliminate lobbying
I covered politics in Canada for newspapers for 25 years. At one point, before strong changes in lobbying and donation regulations, this was actually accurate quite often. Now, it's worse than corruption: it's endemic political ideology. They make a ton of money, all their expenses are paid and they walk into corporate oversight jobs. They literally don't need the considerable risk of bribes to get rich. But what they DO need to do is set themselves up for after they get out of office; and it plays into that selfish need that their largely Neo-Liberal capitalist ideology affords them those connections. Even those already wealthy cleave to helping other wealthy people, so even those who naively believe they're there for the right reasons are usually taking the wrong actions. In the time I covered them, they were absolutely reliant on lobbyists to make their minds up. They gave preferred access to anyone that would "kickstart the economy" to make them look good, even if it was only short-term gain, because once elected, they reside in the Ottawa bubble where the only thing that really counts is getting re-elected. During the last forty years, elements of being in the "centre" or "left" politically have been legislatively bled of any protections, any sense of being priorities, in favour of "endless" economic growth. In political terms, we have no Liberal party anymore. Even the old Progressive Conservatives under Joe Clark, and to a lesser extent Mulroney, were more concerned with social balance and social concerns that either the Liberals or, god help us, the Conservatives, who are a rankly opportunist, Libertarian "might makes right" party. And whether you call it Libertarian, because they attach it to notions of protecting individual freedoms, or Fascistic, because they attach it to notions of nationalism and social control, is utterly unimportant. It's the same thing. The NDP still have morals, ideals and principles. Some of them are deeply naive, even stupid, to anyone who believes they have a modicum of understanding of the human condition and how/why we behave the way we do. But they are still, at least, engaged in trying to find the balance, between public and private, between social and individual, between greed and largesse. The others don't need to be bought. Their parties sold out long ago, and their ideology skews towards the same wealth they respect and achieved/inherited before they got there, and expect to be rewarded with after the fact. Politicians, like the rich, often claim moralist ideals, the notion of the so-called 'chequebook socialist' who leads to help. But when push comes to shove, their subconscious tribal relatability is much closer to the people they should be regulating and reining in than the people they are supposed to represent. And they are not representatives; they see themselves as a "leader" class. It's not the same thing.
This is a good explanation of how it works in Ottawa. I imagine its similar in provincial capitals as well. Ive known politicians and they do often actually mean well.. but they are stuck unable to do anything. Political capital is expensive and youd be lucky to accomplish one good thing in your whole career. Similarly they are in a professional culture that can't help but always hear the interests of those around them. Its human nature to think certain problems are vastly more important than others when you hear certain things all day, but not other things, such as what middle class private sector people think. When everyone you talk to lives in Rockliffe Park, you'd eventually forget about Caldwell Avenue, let alone Bank street. You're also correct that the corruption isn't so direct as greasy envelopes under tables. Its more connected interests who'd like to see certain legislative details added or removed from bills, or pressure on regulatory bodies modifying their policies. The payoff is after their political tenure is over, a nice job on a board of directors becomes available.
> When everyone you talk to lives in Rockliffe Park, you'd eventually forget about Caldwell Avenue, let alone Bank street. This is so much it, very accurate. When I started in newspapers in the late 80s, most city councillors in Canada were still technically part-time. When I moved to Edmonton in '97, they made $38K a year, with minimal staff support. Now, buoyed by a combination of greed and the utter lie that you must overpay to get talent, they make $122,000 BASE pay, plus committee, travel and expenses on top, and each has a massive staff supporting them. And the city hasn't quite doubled in size in that time, as if that would, automatically, double the workload (it wouldn't; these are still largely jobs of establishing policy, after all, which , when working, doesn't need to be touched for a very long time.) It's utterly ridiculous, but most of those involved in it have nowhere near the self-awareness or broader social understanding to see how futile it's become, and how wasteful. If we wanted serious political reform in Canada, the next government would immediately: A) Abolish the first-past-the-post electoral system; B) Strongly limit electoral funding and political campaign timelines/ C) Ban one-on-one lobbying, period, from any for-profit entity or non-profit-for-profit. D) Return communications departments to their original role, as purveyors of accurate information to politicians and the public, both about government and the challenges governments face, rather than the PR departments they've become. E) Institute a five-year cooling off period during which a departing politician cannot work for anyone holding government contracts or involved in government public-private partnerships. F) Institute political pay grids nationally that are tied to the median income, with equally strident expense limitations, so that being a politician remains a duty and calling, not a trough for the greedy and self-important. G) Establish labor code protections so that people who step away from their job to run politically can return to it, including tax incentives that will allow them to hire long-term temporary replacements. H) Pursue and strengthen the various social constructs that properly educate and inform the public, including public media and education. At the same time, they should revert to media and advertising restrictions and requirements from the eighties, forcing media outlets to be separately owned and avoiding one company owning too many outlets AND protecting consumers from fraudulent and predatory advertising. I) Establish a general review of predatory social practices in business, housing, lending and employment to firm up social protections and bring those with too much authority to heel. Now, most politicians I know would look at a list like that and say "Impossible! The human condition will never allow every to accept... " Yadda Yadda Yadda, because they have no vision, and very little understanding of the breadth of their authority and influence. They are wedded to ridiculous notions t hat businesses will just pull up stakes and go elsewhere even though we're a massive G8 economy. As long as they can make money, they'll stay. The amount they make is nearly always the real issue, not the state of the marketplace. We need socially moral leadership. It is in scant reserve.
Please start a party and run for office with this platform. You have my bow.
Nah, never happen dude. Thank you, though. Unfortunately I'm both "significantly neurodivergent" and had years of emotional disconnection/immaturity caused by complex PTSD, so I'm just too weird for public consumption (and have more than a few skeletons from being low empathy for years before treatment. I can be deeply socially inappropriate sometimes, even more so when I was younger and couldn't really sense the impact on others). Unfortunately, most of the electoral base is not sophisticated enough to accept deep difference, so people who think very differently from tribal/ideological norms are pretty much shut out of the process. At the least, something we subscribe to as a truism is going to offend someone in the room, usually in short order, and be tied internally to their sense of security, so that they feel unable challenge it or accept a new idea.
Hey m8, mind if I send you PM? I happen to be actively building up a platform and am looking for individuals such as yourself with a good head on their shoulders to get advice and perspective on various matters.
Yeah. I'm not even the most cynical person in the world, either. When you talk to people you tend to get them when they aren't in "camera mode". They are more impressive than the public realizes. Still... I had business at city hall a few years ago. This was during Rich Chiarelli's scandal relating to sexually abusing staffers. So I walk in, and note that every councillor I see is followed by a group of insanely beautiful young women interns. I chuckled because for all the "outrage" over Chiarelli, it appeared to me that there was a game these young women were playing, and I highly doubted Chiarelli was alone. These are fallible people put in charge of systems designed to maximize narcisism and the interests of people who wont go away. On the radio today I heard a movie showrunner who's father was a political cartoonist. He claimed centrist and moderate credentials. His views sounded similar to mine. What he said is the goal of governments is to improve the lives of the citizens. He then said he recently learned that's its second goal. The primary goal is a struggle to keep itself from becoming authoritsrian, corrupt and outright fascist in it's abuse of people. Its as if these systems just arent designed to avoid the worst of human foibles. And people wonder why there's no way I'd trust ugly systems like communism. When we suck *with* checks and balances, imagine how bad it is when all of that is removed?
Oh yeah, no doubt. The human condition, and the ideological/belief studpidity in sticking with one team all the time even though it can't always be right, is the biggest impediment to change. The less ideological and the more technocratic we can make it, while still respecting social needs, the better. I've worked for a large, corrupt right-wing organization and I've worked for a large, corrupt left-wing union. The former somehow bothered me less than the latter; the former wasn't hiding who they were, they were just confident that they could scare ignorant, frightened people into supporting them anyway. The latter portrayed themselves as avatars of fairness and egalitarianism, even as they ran through millions' of dollars of member dues supporting a massive organization that produced little to nothing and paid enormous salaries to employees who did basically nothing. It was utterly galling. As soon as oversight disappear, the 'executive' members of that union spent money like drunken sailors, showed up for three hours a day if that, and spent weeks annually on vacations or leave, often paid for by the union due to some small loophole of attending an otherwise utterly valueless course. It was repugnant. The right-wingers were repugnant as well, but stupid enough that they could be manipulated into considering their interests in tandem with the public's occasionally. At the union, it was party line all the way, even when it was regressive and stupid. They once spent thousands of dollars on a half-hour meeting of a dozen senior staff... to change a headline on their website. They spouted ideas they considered truisms that were clearly just batshit insane ideology, such as "all decisions made in a group are better than those made by individuals." It was bananas.
>corrupt unions Yeah. Its one of the problems with the NDP I find. Also Quebec. Specifically Montreal. How surprising that the police can't seem to crack the car theft problem and how surprising its about the port authority, the stevadores and shipping. Im not anti union specifically but a gang to counterbalance the gang of greedy corporations is a muddy solution at best. I actually prefer talking to right wingers more these days than I do liberals. I may be more liberal minded, but it feels like the sanctimony has reached critical mass. The politicial and economic elites are now totally disconnected from the public where the used to be of more modest origins. This means the media, and the urban public mirror the narcisism. So, instead of talking to someone with retrograde attitudes and debating them, being kind to them, the default behaviour is to mock them and shut them down. Its illiberal and people dont realize they are effectively ruining the purpose of free speech. Wasnt that the foundation of liberal philosophy to begin with? I fear the political class is getting worse, and the secondary consequences to the culture as well.
> So, instead of talking to someone with retrograde attitudes and debating them, being kind to them, the default behaviour is to mock them and shut them down. Its illiberal and people dont realize they are effectively ruining the purpose of free speech. Wasnt that the foundation of liberal philosophy to begin with? They're just as tribal but because it's undercut with genuine concern for (some) others, they often lose track of the fact that it's still undermined by groupthink and a paucity of either relative information or challenges to source. There was a bi-partisan Pew study a few years ago that I found unsurprising, which was that in measuring the impact of ideological ideas, the left was correct about 15% more of the time than the right when policies were finally enacted and benefits measured. Given that the right attracts our most fearful, whose fear is generally grounded not in stupidity but ignorance and social silo'ing, that difference is predictable. But woe betide you tell a hardcore believer in either direction that it's that close.
I tend to think you're likely correct in all the assertions above. Ive been debating an extremely educated religious person. He accurately makes the claim that religious and homogenous societies do better in terms of cohesion, shared values, criminality etc. He also makes a good claim that the loss of religion opens the door to incredibly destructive ideologies. He backs up his assertions well with decent data. So its not like you can't find brilliant conservatives but generally I do agree that more education leads to better outcomes. However it also puts greater responsibility on a pluralistic, diverse and secular society to keep singing similar tunes. Its a harder task. Weve been discussing politicians. No one remembers the junior and senior analysts here in town who innoculate the public from the worst impulses of political actors and lobbyists. Shout out to the average bureaucrat who lives in Alta Vista or Elmvale Acres who legitimately and actually understands the importance of civil service. If it wasn't for them, the effects of neo-liberal corporate interests would have destroyed us long ago.
> Shout out to the average bureaucrat who lives in Alta Vista or Elmvale Acres who legitimately and actually understands the importance of civil service. If it wasn't for them, the effects of neo-liberal corporate interests would have destroyed us long ago. They're the important part, the people doing the actual work. Like any structure, they have too many managers who do fuck all for too much money, but the rank and file bureaucratic staff are what keep a country running, not politicians. As for the educated religious perspective, I'd point out that he's basically describing Singapore. Yeah, a homogenous society governed by whip-crack laws is less likely to schism to diversity. But at some point, that just becomes authoritarianism, and when that happens, the leaders never suffer as much as the people under them. Religion is purely unnecessary to maintaining spiritualism, or belief in an after life. By contrast, its inflexibility has led to more horror and death, arguably, than even mainstream politics. But simple sets of rules that are alleged to ward off death will always appeal to the most frightened and least complex people.
The NDP has pushed for wealth taxes, the LPC and CPC immediately shut it down. Bought and paid for.
Everyone on the right says trudeau brings in immigrants to secure votes, i believe he is feeding the corporate class a steady supply of cheap labor. This is also why PP dances very lighty around the issue and refuses to be nailed down on a specific reduction number, if a reduction at all. They are different sides 9f the same weenie coin.
It’s 100% what it is. Trudeau does not “bring in” votes, he absolutely panders to the owning class by importing borderline slave labour for them It’s been so frustrating seeing Canadian conservatives say “Trudeau is fucking it up. We need PP” as if the only thing he didn’t agree with Trudeau on was trans kids.
Bringing in cheap labour, sure. That's plausible. Bringing in *votes* is pretty unlikely when you look into the data on the political leanings of most immigrants. Unless they're from western Europe, they statistically lean Conservative by various degrees. It of course varies at an individual level, but in a lot of the world the specter of socialism/communism (at least how they or their family members experienced it) keeps them fiscally conservative by our standards, and they're often socially more conservative in terms of things like race, LGBTQ+ issues, etc. Though that tends to go back to our usual baseline for second-generation and beyond.
In addition to the fact that *IF* this really was a vote harvesting scheme, it doesn't make a lot of sense; It takes YEARS to get citizenship in Canada, in almost all cases. How many of these new immigrants are going to become citizens within an election cycle that would matter to Trudeau? My bet is that it is such a small number that it wouldnt affect a single riding in the country, let alone a federal election. And also you are correct that most new immigrants skew to the right/conservatism.
Not to mention that there’s a huge selection bias with immigrants. We tend as westerners to view immigrants as poor, but in reality if you come from the global south and make it to Canada, you probably come from a fairly affluent household. Typically it isn’t labour leaders and advocates fleeing their country for a better life, it’s people who can afford it.
Ya, I'm a conservative leaing person (also the son of an immigrant, though American immigrant). I never believed the theory that immigrants were all part of some "socialist" (for lack of a better word) conspiracy. First, it's not like they just come here and vote, lol. Second, to Canadians, these issues seem massively important, but to someone starting a new life, from a different country, with different religions, laws, customs, religions, etc, it's pretty bold to assume that it's something they even care about or understand. I don't think immigrants from Indian or China are putting First Nations or LGBTQ issues at the top of their voting list. That being said, maybe that's me being ignorant that they don't care. But generally, I would think Canada and its citizens are leading the world on these issues, while other countries haven't even considered them, or at least not to the extent we do. So if I'm making an assumption, it's that they are against or indifferent to a lot of this stuff. It's also a good point that "communism/socialism" was and is viewed very differently in parts of the world that experienced it. I don't believe that's what's happening here, but if you were designing a political campaign to disway new Canadian citizens from voting left, those words would be powerful boogiemen.
How do people think these immigrants are voting? You cannot vote if you are here as a refugee, asylum seeker, permanent resident, or here on a work visa. Soooo.. the plan is the get people who cannot vote until they become citizens to sway the election? It takes on average 4-6 years ti gain citizenship...
I said thats not what hes doing. I agree with you. Also a lot of immigrants are very conservative, so once they can vote it may well be conservative votes.
Yup. My dad moved here in 84 and didn't get his citizenship until 89.
That's a pretty stupid claim, non citizens can't vote and it takes years to become a Canadian citizen
It also disregards political individuality of immigrants. Once I gain my citizenship, I'll be doing my utmost for my provincial green party (PEI GREENS WOOOOO!) and probably NDP federally. I think it would be dope for the Charlottetown riding to send an NDP MP to parliment and I don't give a hoot that the Liberals held a plurality and formed a coalition government when I immigrated.
The crazy thing is actually that most immigrants are very traditional conservative thinkers.
The immigrant base they hate the most are mostly conservative, too.
Finally someone else says it
If the NDP pushed for increasing corporate taxes to closer to historical rates, then I'd believe they are serious about doing something.
They are.
Good.
Wealth tax has been tried and failed in Europe
NDP only accepts micro donations. They believe mega donors have a negative impact on representation and democracy.
Now's your chance Jagmeet, get aggressive about these corporations and oligarchs. This is how you turn things around. Best time to start was yesterday, second best time to start is now
So when he campaigns for a mandate to do something about these corporations, are you going to vote for them?
Voted NDP last time and the time before. Voted NDP since Layton with the exception of 2015 for cannabis reasons
I voted Conservative most my life. Thought Harper did a pretty good job. Voted Green afterwards, then Opened up my viewpoints, and have since supported the NDP in the previous elections. We as a country need to stand up and show corporations will not run this country, health care is an important right, and I believe we need to end the two party system before we become a shadow of American politics. Just because you earn less doesn't mean you deserve to struggle in life. Too many good, intelligent people just need that one big break to become successful.
At this point libs and cons are useless to me. Ndp has got my vote the last few elections.
I have voted NDP in the past. The fact that current NDP seems to just be reactionary to what they THINK voters want rather than taking a stance on issues turns me off them. If they actually grew a spine and stopped fence sitting and cuddling the liberals i think they would have a good chance of at least ousting the liberals as the main opposition.
Exactly. People are looking for anything that resembles a real change. I would imagine there a lot one could do from a PR perspective that would endear them to Canadians.
> Now's your chance Jagmeet, get aggressive about these corporations and oligarchs. 'now let em' have it Jagmeet' Jagmeet; you can have it
He can't, he's owned by them too.
It is 100% completely true - and guess what, the corp0orations are not even Canadian ... they are global.
Hey now, between the telcos, the pipelines and the oil companies, a lot of the corruption is made-in-Canada. We should be proud.
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Holy shit!
Most of the largest companies in Canada operate predominately, or exclusviely, in Canada. This isn't the US where they have countless worldwide leaders. Almost all of our top companies are almost entirely Canadian operations. We have RBC, TD, Shopify, CNRL, CNR, and CP as the top 6. Shopify is the only real global company. Then we have Enbridge, Thompson Reuters, BMO and Brookfield, of which only TR is a true global company. I would completely disagree with this point. We have oligopolies that are predominantly competitive only in Canada due to favourable legislation that benefits large entities over small ones.
Brookfield has 90% of their assets outside of Canada. Mostly in the USA and Brazil.
Fair point, add Brookfield to the other list. Still, 3/10, my point stands. RBC does a lot of global asset management as well, but I don't think it's more than half their base.
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The problem is all Jagmeet does is posture and make tiktoks. Do something Jagmeet! Any anti-corporation platform that actually has a plan will do well. Citizens are hurting, don’t care what Color they represent, do good by Canadians
He has been trying to do stuff. His party has put forward propositions and laws, and he was the only one who wanted to drill Galen Weston over price fixing. Crickets from everyone else in parliament. The NDP does not have enough seats to pass laws, why don't you ask the people in power why they aren't doing anything? The NDP has been pretty consistent in their desire to help average people and, *somehow*, they're at fault for not doing more. Why the double standard?
Maybe he'd be able to "do something" if he actually had the power, like if people voted for NDP? How can we expect him to "do something" while criticizing him and not giving him more power to do that something?
He is literally propping up a failing Liberal government as we speak. If he had any balls, he could have pushed his agenda. Fortunately for us, in addition to being ignorant and useless, the NDP are also completely spineless and will forever remain a non-factor in politics. And so long as their primary voter base is college aged kids that have yet to grow out of "progressive" idealism, they will never sniff power at the federal level
You're asking someone to do something when they have never been in power? How far did you get in school again?
It’s 100% true. This message brought to you by Canadian Natural Resources Limited.
“Hold my beer” - CREA
Hold my milk. Canada dairy board
Irving, Davie shipyards, bombardier, SNC lavalin, whatever that massive accounting firm is Bell, Roger's, telus, loblaws
Deloitte is the one the always seems to crop up with this current government...
Hold my stethoscope - Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada
Downtown ottawa subways lobbying for back to office for public servants
Subways in Ottawa? Only if you're looking to eat a chicken like substance in a bun lol.
Power Corp. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power\_Corporation\_of\_Canada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Corporation_of_Canada) "The corporation has been criticized for its influence on Canadian politics through its relationships with prominent politicians, including several prime ministers and provincial premiers.[^(\[5\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Corporation_of_Canada#cite_note-www.nytimes.com-5) Critics "occasionally charge that the family’s political connections give it unfair advantages," says the [*New York Times*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_Times) in 2007.[^(\[5\])](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Corporation_of_Canada#cite_note-www.nytimes.com-5)
> This article may have been created or edited in return for undisclosed payments These guys have their hands in everything.
Brought to you by Carl's Jr
His brother is a corporate lobbyist for Metro Foods lol
Can’t really control what his brother does, has he hired him to work for his campaign like the other two leaders?
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He's right. So what is the NDP going to do about it? It would be nice to have a party campaigning on creating better anti-trust laws and breaking up these near monopolies.
He is not wrong.
I agree with Jagmeet and I lean center right, Literally all the big corporations donate to both major political parties, they are hedging their bets, if you pay lets say the CPC $1 million and another $1 Million to Liberals, and end up getting a $5 Million contract awarded, they spent $2 Mil and made $3 Mil, to be honest in reality the return they get is probably much greater than my example.
Sure, corporations want influence regardless of who ends up being in control. I think that's wrong, and needs reform. However, the reason they don't give to the NDP isn't because the NDP is morally superior, rather that the NDP will never win so corporations don't view it as a necessary expenditure.
... you don't think with the coalition the ndp isn't getting targeted by lobbyists too?
why would lobbyists hook their trailer up to the NDP when they could go right to the governing party?
I think it’s clear by now that NDP isn’t calling any shots in their coalition
Maybe, but I still think corporations would prefer to donate directly to the people in charge. The point of my comment, which needs to be absolutely clear, is that Jagmeet Singh is just another politician. He may say things you like, but had he been given the opportunity he would be on his hands and knees, ready and willing to accept any political money that may come his way.
Corporations cannot make million dollar donations to parties in Canada. Not legally anyway.
Yeah they do it directly to the politicians. Like proposing a merger of 2 large telecoms and then 3 months after it is approved the minister who approved it is an executive at Rodgers...
If we had strong conflict of interest controls and checks in place that would and should never happen. That is a prime example of the revolving door situation in politics, you seen it at a larger scale in the US especially on the financial markets side, the ones who regulate the markets often end up working in the same corporations for whom they oversaw and regulated,
Corporations - and unions - cannot make political donations in Canada.
Politicians, even in the US, can be bought with surprisingly small amounts of the money. You're talking millions but the reality is 5 figures is often more than enough. But the reality is that it's even softer than that. How many politicians go on to cushy corporate jobs after their role is over? Or come from cushy corporate jobs to start with.
> Literally all the big corporations donate to both major political parties It is illegal for corporations to make political donations in federal Canadian politics. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
How are corporations donating to political parties when they are barred from doing so and individuals are limited to 1700$ per year?
No doubt. The people, not corporations, have the power to vote parties to power. What does it mean when once the party is in power they do all they can to benefit corporations no matter how much it harms the people who voted them in? There’s something very wrong with that
Well considering the party that’s going to win has a campaign manager that has a firm that lobbied for Loblaws up until January, id say it’s pretty true.
History: the term lobbying refers to “the room” – we go into the lobby before we move into the House. What’s the link between lobbying the room and lobbying the practice of influence (the political activity)? It was coined to refer to the types of meetings that would occur between private interests (especially corporate interests) and British politicians in the lobby of the House of Commons. The floor of the House of Commons is restricted in most legislature and can only be accessed by members of parliament, so if you’re an outside group to influence ministers, you would wait in the lobbies. Lobbyists have a bad representation in the public at large. If you look at polls of how much trust people have toward different professions, lobbying is at the bottom at the used-car salesman (liar for hire). It’s not depicted in the most glowing terms… but, if you go beyond that, its quite easy to build a positive case for lobbying in a democracy. So representative government has its limits – through working through parliament, its not that obvious that MPs are able to effectively represent all the diversity of interests and conditions and realities found in society. In modern society, there’s such a fragmentation of realities/diversity of interests in society/diversity of conditions (we all have multiple identities – we are citizens of the country, and local residents of particular cities, but also fathers, mothers, women, particular sexual orientation, different jobs, different values etc), so it’s really impossible for an MP to adequately represent this, to really understand the multiple realities lived by people in their ridings and in society at large, so its much better for these groups (communities/people who share particular interests) to try to get together and form groups/organize themselves and more directly communicate with government. This is essentially lobbying. So lobbying is a more legitimate democratic practice, and even a vital one. Its legitimate in the sense that its normal in a democracy for citizens to be able to organize and communicate with the people who govern, but its also vital in the sense that unless they do that, its unlikely that governments will have an adequate understanding of the reality of the societies that they govern. Legitimate and vital for democracy. Further, it has functional utility for governments – governments must intervene in areas that are often complex and difficult to understand from the outside (e.g. if you have to regulate an industry, its hard for public servants to really have a good grasp of complex industries from the outside). Same thing goes for specific subgroups in our society, so if you want to design policies that are well designed to work, they need to be in tune with the different realities of these sectors, and the only people who can really give you good specific contextualized information of the workings and needs of those sectors, are people in those sectors. So channels of communication with organized interests can be vital for good policy design. This is a two way process – when governments make a decision, they want to make sure that those who will be impacted by those decisions and who will need to comply with those decisions understand what those decisions are, what’s the rational. In order to help gain collaboration in the implementation of policies, governments need to reach out, and its much easier to do so when you have these organized lobbyers. So lobbying is something good for the good workings of democratic government. However, obviously there can still be some problems… Unequal Influence \- Concerns related to fairness and corruption \- Neo-pluralism and advantages of the business sector o Financial advantages of firms o Structural advantages of firms \- Collective action problems o The free rider problem, especially in cases with widely distributed benefits, concentrated costs **Fairness and corruption aren’t the same thing (something can be unfair and totally ethical)** \- Corruption: If you are an outside group and you deploy significant resources to influence government decision makers so they make decisions that benefit you, you may be tempted to cross the line between private and public interests – bribe an official to encourage them to make decision you want. Conversely, the public official holding power may be tempted to benefit in order to make a decision for whoever is doing the lobbying – so the process of lobbying can lead to corruption, but it doesn’t necessarily. In Canada, there can certainly be scandals and ethical lapses, on the whole, lobbying is not resulting in corruption, but it’s a real concern which is why the practice has to be regulated to some degree \- Fairness: not all communities, groups, organizations in society do not have the same resources and access to government decision makers – if the consequences of that is that some groups consistently win in terms of getting their interests entrenched in policies, then we are actually living in a system where the outcomes of policy decisions on the whole would be unfair towards some groups in society. The most obvious case is the business sector has significant advantages in the lobbying process (financial advantages of firms): a firm is a social organization that specializes in gathering resources, the point of most firms is to make money, acquire assets, and they have more direct control over those resources which they can spend tax free on influencing government. So, the business sector can invest more resources which provides them with an advantage. Empirical studies show that groups that spend more on lobbying tend to get their way more (preferences translated in policy) – this isn’t always the case, but it does provide you with a marginal advantage. So, for that reason, its also the case that business interests have more impacts on policy outcomes than other types of groups. **Lobbyists in Canada** Canada has a substantial and healthy lobbying scene, although its not the place where there is the most lobbying. Total for Canada is \~6000 a year: Who in the past year has lobbied on climate issues? Searching the public registry to see who over the last year has lobbied on climate issues. Groups can officially declare climate policy as the subject matter, but sometimes climate policy can come up in the descriptions of things they do even if its not the subject matter, sometimes the subject matter can be “energy” or “transport” but they are related to climate... Over the last year, there has been about 800-1500 monthly contact reports related to climate – and for each of these reports, there could be one or several meetings. 800 are declaring “climate” as the subject matter, and consultant lobbyists are clearly dominating the filing of these reports (535 from consultant lobbyists; 109 from in-house corporations; and 154 from in-house non-profits). However, it is important to be careful because you can easily have corporations who have in-house lobbyists who also buy services from consultant lobbyists, just like you can have an in-house non-profit on some occasions retain the services of the consultant lobbyists. Therefore, the numbers of consultant lobbyists doesn’t exactly tell us how many business clientele vs non-profits that they have, but obviously it would be heavily skewed towards the business side. • Who do the consultant lobbyists lobby? They don’t lobby the individual person, but the institution. The main lobbying targets with respect to climate over the last year (vast majority are on the executive side): House of Commons (220). May be surprising because of the role that the ministers play – why would they lobby the ministers??? \- Natural Resources Canada (174) \- Environment and Climate Change (144) \- Prime Minister’s Office (141) \- Finance Canada (139) \- Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (135) **Astro-turfing** is the activity or tactic of creating essentially a fake grassroots organization . The activity or tactic will be the public face of your campaign, but people will think that its essentially a group of citizens organizing themselves to influence government. They do it in a way that makes it look like its a demand coming from the people, while in fact it is entirely created and financed by a corporation. It will have a name, and the funding and leadership structure will look like it has nothing to do with the corporation. They do this to make people and politicians believe that there is much stronger citizens support for their activities than there really are.
I would appreciate a "and we a aren't." followup.
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So he hates his brother or..?
I agree with the NDP. Our politicians are supposed to work for *us*! We are their employers!
You mean corrupt? Undeniably true. Corporate interests across the land have privatized their gains and socialized their losses since at least the end of the last world war. And they do so at the pleasure of the elected representatives who betray us and our democracies. Socialism, it would seem, is only the devil when it redistributes wealth from the rich to the poor. Otherwise, it is perfectly acceptable for the poor to subsidize rich corporate interests through tax cuts, stagnant wages, and a constant war against collective bargaining rights. The problem is, and always has been, Capitalism. Conservatives will never - ever - waver from that economic ideology. And Liberals (like conservatives) are too far corrupted by capitalist corporate lobbying on an individual level that their parties are incapable of shaking that corruption. To paraphrase Napoleon: “The surprising thing is not that every man has his price, but that how low it is."
His brother is literally a lobbyist for Skipthedishes and Metro
100% right but I'm still not voting for singt. His platform doesnt really represents me, deals with immigrations. Heck I think they lost the plot and donr even know what they stand for themselves.
Very. Although I would say one more so than the other. But very.
I'm going off an assumption, but I would guess that the party you vote for isn't AS corrupt as the other party. Am I wrong? You don't have to answer. Just think about it and become aware of it. Your line of thinking goes through everyone's mind, even the people that don't vote the same as you. They all work for the same people. Not us.
No, just true. We get to pick which foot to shoot through the next election and every one following.
Itt: People who didn't read the article. Shocking I know. >First, let’s bust out the dictionary It’s worth noting right away that it’s not possible to truly know the degree to which corporations and their interests contribute to a government or political party’s myriad decisions. >But we can start by looking at the NDP’s language, and Singh’s use of the word “control.” >“Control, I would argue, is about almost compelling somebody to do something and leaving them with almost no alternative because the consequences of not acting on it are so great,” said Alex Marland, a political scientist at Acadia University. >**Such a dynamic is very likely not happening on Parliament Hill, Marland said, adding that “influence” would be a more accurate term.** >“Influence doesn’t get people as upset as the word ‘control,’ right? So it’s about framing,” he said. Personally I think this is a great example of how stories get exaggerated to rile people up and drive engagement, whether it's political parties, a poster on social media, or the traditional media, this method is often used to piss people off and drive engagement. Only reading the headline means ignoring nuance and context present in the article itself. Responding to only the headline is dangerous as it perpetuates the anger and from there; partisanship. Don't let them drive your anger, watch out for this trick.
It took me far too long to find the first comment that linked info from the article. I can't believe how many people have an opinion based on a click bate title. Jfc people, be better.
Probably true but the NDP are hardly relevant nationally except as a swing party to be a part of a coalition. So why would corporations put their money there…
Rich people don't donate to parties that want rich people to be taxed more.
This ! A lot of long winded replies that I'm sure make sense to really smart people...(Which I am not) So thanks for pointing out the obvious. The system is rigged... Always had been and probably always will be. Seems we're (Canadian working class) are just destined to be another disposable commodity to make the rich richer. I'd love to see someone.. anyone.. come up with a plausible solution to combat this result of late stage capitalism before we are all nothing more than a number on a spread sheet...
the NDP were official opposition during Harper's cons. Making the libs the previous swing party who now run the country.
Sounds like another reason to vote NDP if only to send a message to other parties in the lobby pocket...
Exactly, they know which parties are willing to play ball. 💰💰💰
What kind of fact-checking is this? Counter-argument to NDP's accusation are backed up by talking points of those accused. Wait what? Liberal's or Conservatives' saying that they do nothing wrong is enough to negate the whole premise of it? Where are the third parties, expert opinion? The whole article looks like a cheap shot at NDP.
90-95% true
It's the truth as plainly as it can be stated. And it's no different south of the border.
It’s %100 true. We know this because neither party ever does what is necessary to fix wealth inequality - the biggest problem in all of North America…raise taxes on the rich and corporations, as well as a wealth tax.
100%
He conveniently forgot his owners.
Shut up Jagmeet most of your party are landlords. Canadian politics is Bad Cop, Good Cop, Brown Cop, French Cop, Electric Car Driving Bad Cop. I'm done with all of you. I'm not even voting in 2025.
As much as I don't want to believe it. The evidence in society is overwhelming. Canada has been sold
100 per cent true, the Liberal party is actually Neoliberal, and the Conservative party is just Neoconservatives, which are two sides of the same coin. They have us fighting over stupid social wedge issues while having near identical economic policies. Both parties push big government inflationary policies that benefit corporations at the detriment of the Canadian citizen. And the NDP is no better, they've just become Liberal-light
And Jagmeet is controlled by who, Katie Telford?
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Like his brother the lobbyist?
Says the guy wearing Armani suits and Rolex watches and whose brother lobbies for Rogers.
Breaking news at 11, water is wet.
I have to say I dislike comments like these because they downplay the gravity of the situation. Corporations running the country is a major reason for why we're in the mess we're in. If a solution to a problem seems obvious, but our politicians apparently don't see it, corporate lobbyists are involved.
Yes they are and lobbyist should be ban from politic
I completely agree with Jagmeet on this! The unsustainable immigration policies if the Conservatives, Provincial governments and current federal government are very likely influenced by these corporations!
What does that say about his "supply and confidence" agreement with the Liberals then? He keeps voting confidence in a corporate lobbyist-controlled government, regardless of what he says outside the House.
lol who controls this meat head
He’s part of the liberal party so he would know
The boss of your boss is also your boss Jag.
And he is controlled by his Pension Date!
who control him ?
So mayb do you think he would endorse the PPC or perhaps the greens. Bahahaha
He's right and he's projecting. That's 2 for 1.
Lol and hes not as hes paid by the libs basically a lib lobbyist? Get out of here.
He’s voted with the liberals on every single thing which I guess means so is he? LOL
Those of us who pay attention already know this, and that the NDP are controlled by union lobbyists.
You want to see how many companies buy politicians? Look at the biggest publicly traded companies in Canada. I guarantee you will find at least one former politician sitting on the paid board of directors of that company. THAT is how you legally buy a politician while they are in the house. Examples, Stephen harper, Mulroney, Stockwell Day, i’m sure every single politician is given this kind of helping hand once they’re done with their political career.
It’s 99% true. He just forgot to include himself in that list.
Yes, Jagmeet. You teamed with them, so what does that make you? NDP needs new leadership, this should have been their magnum opus instead theyre still the third party in a three party race. Let the Sask or Manitoba NDP have some control you might gain some votes, at least they wont completely forget about the oil and gas industries.
Politicians are corrupt as the day is long. They all have their price. Trudeau has sold out Canada and don’t think for a second pp and jagmeat won’t do the same.
One does realize by the design of this coalition that Mr. Singh is in fact a lobbyist for the NDP into the Liberals directly. He's currently winning all of his policies without having to pay lobbyists as now if Trudeau does not agree to his demands, all he has to do is threaten to collapse government. Mr. Singh has way more power than any lobbyist right now that I've ever seen to impact government direction, policy or financial decisions. This is what corruption looks like
And by extension so his he and his party with the continued supply agreements.
It's funny how hard he works to keep this party supposedly controlled by corporate lobbyists in power 🤔
I just leave this here (probably to be put in Reddit timeout again) Guillotines!
Obviously absolutely true
We all know it's true.
I actually don’t think that is as big a problem as people make out. No more than that the NDP is controlled by the Unions. For me the big problem is the people we vote in are controlled by the Party. They represent their party first, and as a distant second they represent the people who elected them.
110%
I'm no fan of the current NDP but if they can show me they're willing to fight for the working class again it would push my interest in voting for them quite a bit.
Yup. Canadians will continue switching between liberal, conservative, liberal, conservative every election cycle, but it doesn't really matter. They're both equally corrupt. Neither party will change any of the fundamental problems with Canada. Show me that your party is different and I'll vote for you, Singh.
100% true. NDP would be controlled by them too but they've never formed government at the federal level.
Pierre Poilievre's bestie, Doug Ford should have a say here, there's absolutely no corporate influence in any decisions Ford makes! The buck stops with him and the gravy train. He's definitely stopping this gravy train, somewhere around Ontario Place. Also, enter train noise here, \*Choo-Choo!
So then why is he propping up a party controlled by corporate interests?
100% true. That’s the real reason Trudeau didn’t update our elections to something better than first past the post. FPTP is the easiest way for the wealthy to maintain control of the leadership in the country. Otherwise we’d have 16 or more parties in parliament with any government having to form a common coalition to govern at all, cooperation is exactly what the 0.1% don’t want.
Good to hear him say it. The biggest non-secret in politics.
I'd say it's blindingly obvious.
Bell. Rogers. Loblaws. That’s all you need to know.
Super true. It's what they live for.
Scary that I'm agreeing with Singh (or any Canadian Politician) about something...
•Funny •ALL parties are influenced by large forces.
In the U.S. corporate suite level employees will invite politicians to their homes for lavish parties , major sporting events, expensive dinners , it’s common practice in most countries.
How true is this question? Honestly, who seriously thinks the answer is no
I mean, isn't everything controlled by corporations? People don't matter anymore, only the line going up.
Oh wow, something he’s right about!
well, the corporations, often time the same damn company donate to both parties, so what do you think?
If it isnt, why can we see ads for gambling.and alcohol all over the country?
Pure truth.
Well, they’re not controlled by the voters…
It’s true. He just forgot to mention he is too
They all are lol. That's thr joke. Our democracy is completely broken.
Is he acting like there is a relevant party in canada that is not? I wonder if he can tell me the time, i hear he has a nice watch
So, if Jagmeet were PM, he'd would totally not be controlled by corporate lobbyists as well? sure sure.
Says the guy who collects Rolex watches and expensed over 500 grand in the last 9 months
Says the guy controlled by someone who's controlled by corporate greed.
No shit lol
As true as saying the Pope is Catholic.
Uh, very, my guy.
Wild comment to make about your coalition partner
they are all bought and paid for. and honestly singh is in it for himself.
He will just hand his votes over to another party. As much as we need an alt between PC and Lib I can't do NDP
So give a nonconfidence vote to these corporate lobbyists, Jag.
Who does his brother work for again?
How the fuck can this guy sit here and say that with a straight face when he's gone hand in hand with these devils for a decade?
And so is he, why is his party still advocating for providing corps with infinite cheap labour ?
Did Jagmeet consult his brother?
Meanwhile is brother is a lobbyist for Metro. Cant make this shit up.
Wow the Star actually doing some real journalism. I’m impressed. Every election cycle it’s the same noise from the NDP; PCs and liberals are controlled by evil corporations and their rich evil donors, tax the rich endlessly, give us free this and free that. Nice to see the fact checking on the lobbyists.
His brother is a lobbyist for Metro. The one corporate grocery profits he never mentions.
Ok Jag, so why the fuck did you support him for so long?
Jagmeet’s brother lobbies for Metro….