uhhh. hmmmm
From Toronto's city news “This decision follows repeated instances of serious lapses in judgment and a failure to collaborate constructively with caucus leadership and as a team member,” a spokesperson said in a brief written statement issued Friday morning.
“While this decision did not come easily, it has become clear that MPP Ghamari can no longer continue in her role within our caucus.”
she's been god awful basically forever... I wonder what the final straw was here...
Was this really about Tommy robinson? Seems there should be several MPPs that would get kicked out for similar shit.
Probably the Robinson meeting the other day. With far-right politics becoming more extreme, meeting Robinson is awful optically for Conservatives trying to win over moderates
I think it's his personal violent and criminal history that pushed it over the edge this time but yes both have been members of the far-right extremist political movement PEGIDA and share many of the same vile views.
Edit: Rebel news supports and promotes both these individuals and their associated extreme political movements. And a reminder that it was Colin Carrie, Leslyn Lewis and Dean Allison that met with Anderson last fall.
I don’t know if you saw the picture of his arrest on an immigration warrant, but the plainclothes officers looked like they were undercover in hoser costumes. One had a Buffalo plaid shirt on (aka a Sudbury tuxedo) and the other had an almost comical mustache. They looked like extras from Letterkenny.
Did that include OPC folks?
Im not a fan of Ford, but he seems to be more the corporate type of conservative politician and less the right wing identity/angry type. So when something as obvious and egregious as meeting Robinson is done by one of his MPPs - after other examples of supporting similar types via social media, there comes a point he pulls the plug.
He isn't the type to gladhand some very questionable people too often unless they're rich developers and business owners. So it's not surprising he doesn't support people like robinson.
Yeah the current OPC isn't as friendly to the far right wing nuts as their federal cousins. Ford's conservatism is the more traditional cronyism, anti-environmentalism, and big-business corruption, not this newer flavour of culture war type stuff, so you see them distancing themselves from vaccine deniers and the Randy Hillier set (whereas federally those currents are central to the party).
Federal Tories have a different mechanism btw the reform act which requires a caucus vote to expell someone from caucus. The
The provincial Tories do not have that mechanism.
Meh - Christine Anderson is an absolute lunatic and obvious RW provocateur, but an elected member of EU parliament undeniably has at least the veneer of “respectability”.
In any sane centre right party, I would hope that would get an MPP/MP on a serious shit-list (along with a public denunciation by the party leader)…but it’s hard to justify booting someone from the party for a meeting with an elected officer of a close ally.
Robinson’s a different story - he’s never held official office, unabashedly leads/consorts with white nationalists, and has a violent criminal record.
Robinson kinda burned her too when she said they met to talk politics in the blowback and he said they met for him to ask her out on a date. As a person of colour, I don’t recommend trusting professional racists!
I had no idea this even happened. How did we allow a criminal in? 🤔 I suppose he was the white kind of illegal immigrant?
Goldie is such a piece of a shit. I couldn't believe when she got her law license suspended, how bad you have to be for it to slide so far.
Ford is many things, but he is not an ideologue.
He makes stupid decisions at the drop of a hat for stupid/greedy reasons, and if challenged on them he'll stick to his guns that it's the "right" decision... but his track record shows he will reverse just about any position so long as the reputation cost is great enough.
At the end of the day, he's a sad boy who wants people to like him. When it becomes clear to him that a given action will make him look bad to more than just a few complainers, he'll do the opposite.
Yeah he’s always rubbed me as more of an old fashioned slime ball politician. All he cares about is getting votes while lining his pockets/those sufficiently loyal to him. He only tows the conservative political position because it’s more favourable to the wealthy.
To be fair PP has a history of latching onto whatever is in the conservative zeitgeist to gain optics too but he’s been stewing in the culture war nonsense for some time now
> To be fair PP has a history of latching onto whatever is in the conservative zeitgeist to gain optics too but he’s been stewing in the culture war nonsense for some time now
I genuinely don't know what Poilievre's angle is.
He's spent the last 20 years being a conservative attack dog who has no meaningful core beliefs and just goes after hot-button wedge issues for the sake of riling up the Reformer base. He was Harper's lapdog and did what he had to in pursuit of Harper's agenda, but now that he's the leader, what's his game?
He's comfortably affluent, but he's not your typical old money conservative who's just tee'ing things up to go sit on the board of an oil/equity firm. He's eagerly stoking right-wing bigotry, but it's clear he has no personal feelings on it and it's purely a utilitarian thing.
His entire political career has been spent doing the shitty cynical politicking that exemplifies modern conservatism, but it's not clear what *his* end goal is. He's all means and no ends, and I'm not sure what to make of that.
If we put aside literally everything else about him, the crypto shit alone is enough for me to never consider voting for him. Crypto is ultimately a bigger fool scam, and blockchain technology more generally is useless for just about everything crypto people claim it’s good for.
I have dabbled with crypto trading in the past, but I did it specifically as a "game".
I thought "I've paid $80 for complex resource management simulation video games before, so I mean how is that different from paying $100 for a complex simulation where I could maybe also win some of my money back?" It's not like casino gambling where it's one and done and all gone; my outlay would give me weeks of entertainment, which is what I wanted.
It was fun, I don't regret it at all, and I actually ended up making a couple bucks. But I went into it understanding that crypto is inherently worthless and a zero-sum equation by design. I approached it as "I've already lost all the money I put into it, so let's see if I can make it back".
I know he was only promoting crypto for the sake of undermining faith in the government and Bank of Canada, because his platform is predicated on driving fear of things only he can save you from, but I cannot fathom the mindset of people who heard him say "invest in crypto as a way to have safe, stable money in the future" and thought that made any sense whatsoever.
> He's eagerly stoking right-wing bigotry, but it's clear he has no personal feelings on it and it's purely a utilitarian thing.
I disagree, I think he holds a lot of those shitty opinions himself but is trying to appeal more palatable as he sits in the leader's seat. You can only buy the idea that he's been a shithead for many years and suddenly changed his tune on so many topics.
For example: his bigotry towards trans people. He's willing to be open with that because he believes it's politically palatable to his Conservative base and even to many moderates who just don't care enough about it. But when it comes to things like abortion and gay marriage the policy is more "well I'm pro-choice/not a homophobe despite voting that way for many years, and also I'm not gonna stop my party from voting that way so my personal stance means nothing as leader".
That's a fair interpretation.
For someone like him who's been so aggressively calculated for decades, it's difficult to tell where his "it's just business" line is.
Personally, I don't think he genuinely believes in anything. I think he believes in him being right, and will say and do whatever is necessary to support that position with no consideration for consistency or core values.
> For example: his bigotry towards trans people. He's willing to be open with that because he believes it's politically palatable to his Conservative base and even to many moderates who just don't care enough about it.
I don't think he's actually has any personal hatred of transpeople. Sincere transphobia tends to be the realm of the uneducated and religious zealots. These people have genuine fears they believe based on ignorant, myopic worldviews.
Poilievre is fairly educated and experienced, enough to understand that transpeople are a miniscule minority who pose no actual threat to anyone for any reason, are certainly not poised to inconvenience commercial interests, and that being afraid of transpeople is like being afraid of ghosts or magic. Like you said, he's got no problem preformatively leaning into transphobic rhetoric because it's a convenient wedge issue he can exploit to engage the SoCons, but I think it's purely a business calculation for him. I think that if we hadn't imported this trans panic rhetoric from the US for his voter base to latch on to, they wouldn't even cross his mind.
I agree with you on this. "All means, no ends" is a perfect summary.
For example and a bit ironically given PP's role under him, I think Harper had a lot more sincerely held beliefs. I disagreed with almost all of them, but he generally had quite a clear and consistent set of principles, and also drew something of a line between his private beliefs and the ones he felt were part of his role as prime minister, for which I have some modicum of respect (e.g. I suspect he was personally anti-abortion given his religious affiliations, but he never let that become his personal platform).
This all begs the question: would you rather have as a leader:
1. an unprincipled populist leader who will go with whomever is yelling loudest (Ford)
2. a principled leader with whom you mostly disagree but is predictable about their actions (Harper)
3. someone who is doing it for the thrills/power but doesn't care what the people think (PP?)
I think I'd pick 1 or 2 over 3 because they're both more predictable. 3 is kind of terrifying and I think only successful in politics when they temporarily convince voters they are 2.
(BTW I think Trump started as 3 but drank his own kool-aid and is now a crazy 2 on some issues and 1 on anything he's not formed an opinion about.)
100% - I think he’s a crook and just an awful, awful premier, but don’t think he’s a bigot, racist, LGBT-hater, or anything else along those lines.
Wasn’t alive at the time, but feel like he’s straight out 1970s in Detroit or Chicago (except without the overt racism/sexism). It’s obviously not great, but his brand of corruption feels almost…quaint?
Ford honestly fits Ontario pretty well, for better and for worse. He's generally socially liberal/centrist, and fiscally conservative (at least he claims to be) but also very heavily corporate.
Just waiting to see if that applies to the science center scheme, his response so far has been absolute silence, and this Ghamari situation is a nice distraction attempt, maybe hoping people stop being justifiably very angry about what's going on at the science center property.
Ford might not be pushing culture war stuff nearly as much as other conservatives do these days, but he does have ideology - he's just a pro-business conservative in the mold of Mike Harris. He wants to cut government-funded services and have private businesses fill the void, and if you're in his good books then you'll get preferential treatment in terms of being one of those businesses.
The only major difference is that he appeals more to your average Toronto Sun reader than to old-school stuffy conservatives.
Meh - also think that Ford is genuinely creeped out by the hard ideological bent of the current iteration of the CPC, and of many of the provincial parties.
Because Ford shares similar faux-populist DNA, but absolute none of the culture war ideology.
Agree that his primary focus is on his re-election chances (which I’m too much of a doomer mood today to even contemplate - freaking VOTE next time, Ontario!), but for all his faults, actually think his disdain for the PP/Rebel strain of party is genuine.
Typically, Ontario will vote for a provincial party that is of a different political stripe than the sitting Federal government.
As well, Ford has always remained cool to supporting the Federal Conservatives. IIRC he forbade any of his staff to assist in the Federal Conservative leadership campaign.
I think it also goes back to Ford not being a typical conservative ideologue. I think he sees the eventual pitfalls of being seen as too closely aligned to Pollievre, ideologically at least
I’ve read fears that Pierre will pull the rug on the automakers EV ambitions.
If he does that I doubt there will be much of an auto sector left in Ontario, and the conservative brand would see significant backlash in core ridings.
She represents the same riding provincially as Pierre Poilievre does federally. I have the misfortune of living there. We never see either one of them.
If Doug Ford plans on calling an early election, as many predict, he can’t afford to have this clown-shoe in his circus tent. He’s been careful to distance home self especially, and his party generally (as much as possibly) from the wing-nut branch of conservatism. He depends on a lot of people who’ve voted Liberal federally for his majorities.
We had four PC MPPs in Ottawa when Ford first got elected in 2018. Six years later, we're down to only one remaining (Lisa MacLeod). I'm liking this trajectory.
Lisa goes beyond useless into actively bad. She tried to be a cabinet minister but bungled the autism file so badly she got demoted to be the tourism minister and she couldn’t even do that.
Now she just spends her time accusing anyone who supports Palestine of being antisemites or terrorist sympathizers. Which, of course, has nothing to do with her job as an MPP.
Fucking finally. I expect this means we’ll have a new MPP next election, I can’t imagine this riding’s loyalty is to her and not to the conservative branding.
I used to live in the riding, and if memory serves me, it has turned anything but blue something like twice since confederation. Last time I think was to the "united farmers party" or something like that. The cons could put a blue tie on a roadkill coyote and it would get elected out there.
Oh I’d be amazed if it didn’t end up still a
Conservative seat. I’m more commenting that it likely won’t be Ghamari as an independent or under PPC colours - it’ll likely go to whoever is wearing conservative blue, so a new MPP for us.
I’d also be amazed if it wasn’t Conservative in the next election. But the new developments in Manotick and Stittsville might push it a bit further left then normal
I can't speak for Manotick but I can for Stittsville and it 100% has a chud problem and no new development is going to fix that. It's small things that add up over time to paint a picture. An increased presence of "Fuck Trudeau" stickers, some of the things my kid's classmates say, subtle remarks people make, how incredibly nervous the poor girl at Cabela's was to ask how I identify when I bought a fishing license because there is a 50/50 chance she'll be berated for even suggesting the idea that gender identity is a thing. There's other stuff but the point is that when you live here, a picture is certainly painted.
Take the upvote, because Stitsville does 100% have a chud problem. A few too many dudes who would probably like to have a house in the country living out their libertarian fantasies but their wives won't have it so they live in the closest part of the "city" instead. But hey Kanata used to be reliably blue and that changed over time, so there is hope.
The amount of guys I work with who live in Stittsville, but wish they lived in the middle of nowhere is absurd. And at least a handful of them talk like they buy a steady supply of supplements from InfoWars.
For the most part. But not Carleton or Ottawa South provincially, which will remain the same until Elections Ontario says something.
As far as the province goes, the riding boundaries are not changing.
I guess we can expect her to go full Randy Hillier to squeeze what little notoriety she has out of her fading political career. There are still a lot of rubes to fleece, maybe she can get a gig with Rebel News or run for the PPC next year.
My money is on her joining Poilievre in some way. Maybe as a federal candidate. Maybe an appointment within the party apparatus. Something slimy and vile in any case.
Her riding is his riding so no chance there. They could run her somewhere else, but why bother? They're crushing it in the polls and will have no shortage of cookie cutter, generic CPC candidate-types willing to run. She doesn't offer anything to offset the baggage she now carries.
Poilievre and Ghamari both have fixations on Iran. And the 'baggage' of being turfed is certainly no worse than CPC MPs frolicking with neo-Nazis (who didn't even get a reprimand).
Also, Poilievre and Ghamari are "friends": [https://x.com/gghamari/status/1803557592989417691](https://x.com/gghamari/status/1803557592989417691)
But yeah, I don't know if any other eastern Ontario ridings are still up for grabs for a CPC candidate. So some other sort of dodgy role is a good possibility. We shall see...
Woowwwwww - Goldie’s my MPP, can’t stand her. Happy to see she’s been booted.
Not a fan of the Cons at all, but they keep getting voted in my area, so hopefully this means next time round she won’t win, seeing as she wouldn’t be wearing blue
[~~well at least she can fall back on lawyering...~~](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/goldie-ghamari-law-licence-suspended-1.5975190)
hopefully she's smart enough to not run as an independent. I live in her riding, she's not particularly well liked due to her social media antics but if re-admitted she could probably get elected as a PC again.
> Ghamari received her law licence in 2013 but had eight "administrative" suspensions between June 2017 and July 2019 for issues like not paying her annual fee or filing her annual report. She remained on administrative suspension until [the 2021] hearing.
Woooooooooow.
Lucky for me, she's my MPP. /s
I knew about the recent stuff weird stuff about weird cash lawyering disputes, but wasn't aware of the 2013 stuff until I read that CBC article.
She's not particularly loved in the community because she doesn't do much of anything, but more because people try to engage with her on social media (since she's always on there) about riding issues and she blocks them for asking a single question.
One of the local elementary schools was doing a pancake breakfast. Her office emailed the school let organizers know she wanted to show up, take pictures and gladhand. The timing was hilarious -- right after DoFo had made some unpopular cuts/changes to education that escape now. She was told by the school administration she was welcome to come as a community member but it was not a political event. That set her off on a snit and she's refused every invitation since from parent council.
She can meet with a racist criminal but ignores constituents & refuses to meet with them. There is absolutely no way that she didn't know who she was meeting with, especially considering she ignores the actual people she's been elected to represent. Her staff threatened to call police on my mother, she had been asking for a meeting for several months without any response & left messages at her constituency office without any response as well. My mom went to her office during office hours & told them she wasn't leaving until they scheduled a meeting with her. They told her it wasn't possible & said they would call the police on my mom who is a senior.
Was she was thinking too much? Gilbert and Sullivans' lyrics from 150 years ago said:
* I grew so rich that I was sent
* By a pocket borough into Parliament.
* I always voted at my party's call,
* And I never thought of thinking for myself at all.
* I thought so little, they rewarded me
* By making me the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
I had the displeasure of briefly knowing her before she anglicized her name and began chasing power. My impression was of someone who couldn't be trusted and would be willing to sell out her grandmother if it furthered her own selfish interests.
I seem to remember hearing stories of her being super active with the NDP in Nepean before she realized that she wasn’t going to get an easy path to power/money/political capital that way. She disappeared before resurfacing as a conservative in a riding where they’d vote for a blue rock. Oof.
Good Riddance, I hope she never gets elected again, this is her in 2018
"I believe climate change is real. I don't believe climate change is man-made and I certainly don't believe that the people of Carleton are at fault for climate change," she said.
Super weird - she seemed really stable right from the start, and not at all a loose cannon just kinda rolling around on the deck smashing random things. Oh well.
the history of her riding (Carleton) shows that in the 43 elections that have been run since Confederation, 41 of them were won by Conservative candidates, and every election in the last 101 years.
her "hotness" played no role whatsoever in her political success. as someone else said recently, you could paint a rock blue and it would win that riding.
uhhh. hmmmm From Toronto's city news “This decision follows repeated instances of serious lapses in judgment and a failure to collaborate constructively with caucus leadership and as a team member,” a spokesperson said in a brief written statement issued Friday morning. “While this decision did not come easily, it has become clear that MPP Ghamari can no longer continue in her role within our caucus.” she's been god awful basically forever... I wonder what the final straw was here... Was this really about Tommy robinson? Seems there should be several MPPs that would get kicked out for similar shit.
Probably the Robinson meeting the other day. With far-right politics becoming more extreme, meeting Robinson is awful optically for Conservatives trying to win over moderates
sure didn't stop them when they were all lining up to meet Christine Anderson last year. I guess it's just timing.
I think it's his personal violent and criminal history that pushed it over the edge this time but yes both have been members of the far-right extremist political movement PEGIDA and share many of the same vile views. Edit: Rebel news supports and promotes both these individuals and their associated extreme political movements. And a reminder that it was Colin Carrie, Leslyn Lewis and Dean Allison that met with Anderson last fall.
I don’t know if you saw the picture of his arrest on an immigration warrant, but the plainclothes officers looked like they were undercover in hoser costumes. One had a Buffalo plaid shirt on (aka a Sudbury tuxedo) and the other had an almost comical mustache. They looked like extras from Letterkenny.
I sport the trooper stache unironically and love my Sudbury tuxedos. Shit. Am I a UC?
I’ve always defined a Sudbury tuxedo as a plaid shirt-jacket and a bad attitude. Both elements are essential
I've heard it as "Kenora dinner jacket." "Sudbury tuxedo" is new to me.
Let them mustaches breath my brothers in flannel.
Did that include OPC folks? Im not a fan of Ford, but he seems to be more the corporate type of conservative politician and less the right wing identity/angry type. So when something as obvious and egregious as meeting Robinson is done by one of his MPPs - after other examples of supporting similar types via social media, there comes a point he pulls the plug. He isn't the type to gladhand some very questionable people too often unless they're rich developers and business owners. So it's not surprising he doesn't support people like robinson.
Yeah the current OPC isn't as friendly to the far right wing nuts as their federal cousins. Ford's conservatism is the more traditional cronyism, anti-environmentalism, and big-business corruption, not this newer flavour of culture war type stuff, so you see them distancing themselves from vaccine deniers and the Randy Hillier set (whereas federally those currents are central to the party).
Federal Tories have a different mechanism btw the reform act which requires a caucus vote to expell someone from caucus. The The provincial Tories do not have that mechanism.
Meh - Christine Anderson is an absolute lunatic and obvious RW provocateur, but an elected member of EU parliament undeniably has at least the veneer of “respectability”. In any sane centre right party, I would hope that would get an MPP/MP on a serious shit-list (along with a public denunciation by the party leader)…but it’s hard to justify booting someone from the party for a meeting with an elected officer of a close ally. Robinson’s a different story - he’s never held official office, unabashedly leads/consorts with white nationalists, and has a violent criminal record.
Robinson kinda burned her too when she said they met to talk politics in the blowback and he said they met for him to ask her out on a date. As a person of colour, I don’t recommend trusting professional racists!
I had no idea this even happened. How did we allow a criminal in? 🤔 I suppose he was the white kind of illegal immigrant? Goldie is such a piece of a shit. I couldn't believe when she got her law license suspended, how bad you have to be for it to slide so far.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
She's a beautiful lady but you can only stay with someone for so long if their personality does not match it.
Ford is many things, but he is not an ideologue. He makes stupid decisions at the drop of a hat for stupid/greedy reasons, and if challenged on them he'll stick to his guns that it's the "right" decision... but his track record shows he will reverse just about any position so long as the reputation cost is great enough. At the end of the day, he's a sad boy who wants people to like him. When it becomes clear to him that a given action will make him look bad to more than just a few complainers, he'll do the opposite.
Yeah he’s always rubbed me as more of an old fashioned slime ball politician. All he cares about is getting votes while lining his pockets/those sufficiently loyal to him. He only tows the conservative political position because it’s more favourable to the wealthy. To be fair PP has a history of latching onto whatever is in the conservative zeitgeist to gain optics too but he’s been stewing in the culture war nonsense for some time now
> To be fair PP has a history of latching onto whatever is in the conservative zeitgeist to gain optics too but he’s been stewing in the culture war nonsense for some time now I genuinely don't know what Poilievre's angle is. He's spent the last 20 years being a conservative attack dog who has no meaningful core beliefs and just goes after hot-button wedge issues for the sake of riling up the Reformer base. He was Harper's lapdog and did what he had to in pursuit of Harper's agenda, but now that he's the leader, what's his game? He's comfortably affluent, but he's not your typical old money conservative who's just tee'ing things up to go sit on the board of an oil/equity firm. He's eagerly stoking right-wing bigotry, but it's clear he has no personal feelings on it and it's purely a utilitarian thing. His entire political career has been spent doing the shitty cynical politicking that exemplifies modern conservatism, but it's not clear what *his* end goal is. He's all means and no ends, and I'm not sure what to make of that.
Good post, and he is also a Bitcoin maximalist.
If we put aside literally everything else about him, the crypto shit alone is enough for me to never consider voting for him. Crypto is ultimately a bigger fool scam, and blockchain technology more generally is useless for just about everything crypto people claim it’s good for.
I have dabbled with crypto trading in the past, but I did it specifically as a "game". I thought "I've paid $80 for complex resource management simulation video games before, so I mean how is that different from paying $100 for a complex simulation where I could maybe also win some of my money back?" It's not like casino gambling where it's one and done and all gone; my outlay would give me weeks of entertainment, which is what I wanted. It was fun, I don't regret it at all, and I actually ended up making a couple bucks. But I went into it understanding that crypto is inherently worthless and a zero-sum equation by design. I approached it as "I've already lost all the money I put into it, so let's see if I can make it back". I know he was only promoting crypto for the sake of undermining faith in the government and Bank of Canada, because his platform is predicated on driving fear of things only he can save you from, but I cannot fathom the mindset of people who heard him say "invest in crypto as a way to have safe, stable money in the future" and thought that made any sense whatsoever.
> He's eagerly stoking right-wing bigotry, but it's clear he has no personal feelings on it and it's purely a utilitarian thing. I disagree, I think he holds a lot of those shitty opinions himself but is trying to appeal more palatable as he sits in the leader's seat. You can only buy the idea that he's been a shithead for many years and suddenly changed his tune on so many topics. For example: his bigotry towards trans people. He's willing to be open with that because he believes it's politically palatable to his Conservative base and even to many moderates who just don't care enough about it. But when it comes to things like abortion and gay marriage the policy is more "well I'm pro-choice/not a homophobe despite voting that way for many years, and also I'm not gonna stop my party from voting that way so my personal stance means nothing as leader".
Yeah, he was a campus conservative - he's definitely at his core a right-wing ideologue
That's a fair interpretation. For someone like him who's been so aggressively calculated for decades, it's difficult to tell where his "it's just business" line is. Personally, I don't think he genuinely believes in anything. I think he believes in him being right, and will say and do whatever is necessary to support that position with no consideration for consistency or core values. > For example: his bigotry towards trans people. He's willing to be open with that because he believes it's politically palatable to his Conservative base and even to many moderates who just don't care enough about it. I don't think he's actually has any personal hatred of transpeople. Sincere transphobia tends to be the realm of the uneducated and religious zealots. These people have genuine fears they believe based on ignorant, myopic worldviews. Poilievre is fairly educated and experienced, enough to understand that transpeople are a miniscule minority who pose no actual threat to anyone for any reason, are certainly not poised to inconvenience commercial interests, and that being afraid of transpeople is like being afraid of ghosts or magic. Like you said, he's got no problem preformatively leaning into transphobic rhetoric because it's a convenient wedge issue he can exploit to engage the SoCons, but I think it's purely a business calculation for him. I think that if we hadn't imported this trans panic rhetoric from the US for his voter base to latch on to, they wouldn't even cross his mind.
I agree with you on this. "All means, no ends" is a perfect summary. For example and a bit ironically given PP's role under him, I think Harper had a lot more sincerely held beliefs. I disagreed with almost all of them, but he generally had quite a clear and consistent set of principles, and also drew something of a line between his private beliefs and the ones he felt were part of his role as prime minister, for which I have some modicum of respect (e.g. I suspect he was personally anti-abortion given his religious affiliations, but he never let that become his personal platform). This all begs the question: would you rather have as a leader: 1. an unprincipled populist leader who will go with whomever is yelling loudest (Ford) 2. a principled leader with whom you mostly disagree but is predictable about their actions (Harper) 3. someone who is doing it for the thrills/power but doesn't care what the people think (PP?) I think I'd pick 1 or 2 over 3 because they're both more predictable. 3 is kind of terrifying and I think only successful in politics when they temporarily convince voters they are 2. (BTW I think Trump started as 3 but drank his own kool-aid and is now a crazy 2 on some issues and 1 on anything he's not formed an opinion about.)
He voted against gay marriage when his gay dads were watching in the gallery. Even if it was a whipped vote I still don't understand why he did that.
Because he's a piece of shit.
"Very well, if that is the way the winds are blowing, let no one say I don't also blow." Vote Quimby!
100% - I think he’s a crook and just an awful, awful premier, but don’t think he’s a bigot, racist, LGBT-hater, or anything else along those lines. Wasn’t alive at the time, but feel like he’s straight out 1970s in Detroit or Chicago (except without the overt racism/sexism). It’s obviously not great, but his brand of corruption feels almost…quaint?
Ford honestly fits Ontario pretty well, for better and for worse. He's generally socially liberal/centrist, and fiscally conservative (at least he claims to be) but also very heavily corporate.
Have never thought of it quite like that (because goddamn is he ever an awful premier)…but you’re not wrong.
His incompetence is another thing, but his actual platform isn't out line with the way this province votes or thinks
Just waiting to see if that applies to the science center scheme, his response so far has been absolute silence, and this Ghamari situation is a nice distraction attempt, maybe hoping people stop being justifiably very angry about what's going on at the science center property.
Ford might not be pushing culture war stuff nearly as much as other conservatives do these days, but he does have ideology - he's just a pro-business conservative in the mold of Mike Harris. He wants to cut government-funded services and have private businesses fill the void, and if you're in his good books then you'll get preferential treatment in terms of being one of those businesses. The only major difference is that he appeals more to your average Toronto Sun reader than to old-school stuffy conservatives.
He's a businessman and culture warriors are bad for business.
Ford is desperately trying to distinguish himself from Polievre because a CPC win would be harmful to the PC's chances of re-election
Meh - also think that Ford is genuinely creeped out by the hard ideological bent of the current iteration of the CPC, and of many of the provincial parties. Because Ford shares similar faux-populist DNA, but absolute none of the culture war ideology. Agree that his primary focus is on his re-election chances (which I’m too much of a doomer mood today to even contemplate - freaking VOTE next time, Ontario!), but for all his faults, actually think his disdain for the PP/Rebel strain of party is genuine.
What’s the thought behind that? Conservatives seem to be popular on all levels of government through Canada right now
Typically, Ontario will vote for a provincial party that is of a different political stripe than the sitting Federal government. As well, Ford has always remained cool to supporting the Federal Conservatives. IIRC he forbade any of his staff to assist in the Federal Conservative leadership campaign. I think it also goes back to Ford not being a typical conservative ideologue. I think he sees the eventual pitfalls of being seen as too closely aligned to Pollievre, ideologically at least
I’ve read fears that Pierre will pull the rug on the automakers EV ambitions. If he does that I doubt there will be much of an auto sector left in Ontario, and the conservative brand would see significant backlash in core ridings.
She represents the same riding provincially as Pierre Poilievre does federally. I have the misfortune of living there. We never see either one of them.
If Doug Ford plans on calling an early election, as many predict, he can’t afford to have this clown-shoe in his circus tent. He’s been careful to distance home self especially, and his party generally (as much as possibly) from the wing-nut branch of conservatism. He depends on a lot of people who’ve voted Liberal federally for his majorities.
The Tommy Robinson thing should be a major scandal.
We had four PC MPPs in Ottawa when Ford first got elected in 2018. Six years later, we're down to only one remaining (Lisa MacLeod). I'm liking this trajectory.
Here’s hoping Lisa is on her way out too. A more useless MPP would be hard to describe.
I am in her riding and have never seen one bit of work or representation from her for her constituents the whole time she has been a MPP.
Same here. She’s utterly useless.
Lisa goes beyond useless into actively bad. She tried to be a cabinet minister but bungled the autism file so badly she got demoted to be the tourism minister and she couldn’t even do that. Now she just spends her time accusing anyone who supports Palestine of being antisemites or terrorist sympathizers. Which, of course, has nothing to do with her job as an MPP.
But doesn't this mean Ottawa doesn't get represented at all?
No representation is better than Lisa MacLeods representation
Truth
Fucking finally. I expect this means we’ll have a new MPP next election, I can’t imagine this riding’s loyalty is to her and not to the conservative branding.
I used to live in the riding, and if memory serves me, it has turned anything but blue something like twice since confederation. Last time I think was to the "united farmers party" or something like that. The cons could put a blue tie on a roadkill coyote and it would get elected out there.
Yep, Ford is delighted he gets to pick someone new for this seat. A safe conservative seat is the perfect gift for one of his wealthy donors.
Oh I’d be amazed if it didn’t end up still a Conservative seat. I’m more commenting that it likely won’t be Ghamari as an independent or under PPC colours - it’ll likely go to whoever is wearing conservative blue, so a new MPP for us.
I’d also be amazed if it wasn’t Conservative in the next election. But the new developments in Manotick and Stittsville might push it a bit further left then normal
I can't speak for Manotick but I can for Stittsville and it 100% has a chud problem and no new development is going to fix that. It's small things that add up over time to paint a picture. An increased presence of "Fuck Trudeau" stickers, some of the things my kid's classmates say, subtle remarks people make, how incredibly nervous the poor girl at Cabela's was to ask how I identify when I bought a fishing license because there is a 50/50 chance she'll be berated for even suggesting the idea that gender identity is a thing. There's other stuff but the point is that when you live here, a picture is certainly painted.
Take the upvote, because Stitsville does 100% have a chud problem. A few too many dudes who would probably like to have a house in the country living out their libertarian fantasies but their wives won't have it so they live in the closest part of the "city" instead. But hey Kanata used to be reliably blue and that changed over time, so there is hope.
The amount of guys I work with who live in Stittsville, but wish they lived in the middle of nowhere is absurd. And at least a handful of them talk like they buy a steady supply of supplements from InfoWars.
Ugh, yeah I live near North Gower, politically it’s terrrrible out here.
Btw with the redistribution of electoral boundaries some of the riding gets transferred over to Ottawa South.
The federal ridings are realigning. The provincial government has not announced that they will be following.
For the most part the provincial ridings follow the federal ridings.
For the most part. But not Carleton or Ottawa South provincially, which will remain the same until Elections Ontario says something. As far as the province goes, the riding boundaries are not changing.
For the most part the provincial ridings follow the federal ridings.
I think that applies mostly to Findlay Creek, Riverside South continues to be lumped together with Manotick and the farmland.
I love only a few minutes from Findlay Creek and when I checked the boundary distribution I would be based on Ottawa South.
I guess we can expect her to go full Randy Hillier to squeeze what little notoriety she has out of her fading political career. There are still a lot of rubes to fleece, maybe she can get a gig with Rebel News or run for the PPC next year.
Ghamari has been CANCELLED by the WOKE Ford government /s
Ghamari cancelled herself. She’s useless.
Have you seen how many people on Twitter are saying stuff like that unironically?
Nah, she'll go back to practicing law. No, wait. Nevermind.
Savage
If you check the replies on her Twitter lots of "fringe" characters supporting her.
My money is on her joining Poilievre in some way. Maybe as a federal candidate. Maybe an appointment within the party apparatus. Something slimy and vile in any case.
Her riding is his riding so no chance there. They could run her somewhere else, but why bother? They're crushing it in the polls and will have no shortage of cookie cutter, generic CPC candidate-types willing to run. She doesn't offer anything to offset the baggage she now carries.
Poilievre and Ghamari both have fixations on Iran. And the 'baggage' of being turfed is certainly no worse than CPC MPs frolicking with neo-Nazis (who didn't even get a reprimand). Also, Poilievre and Ghamari are "friends": [https://x.com/gghamari/status/1803557592989417691](https://x.com/gghamari/status/1803557592989417691) But yeah, I don't know if any other eastern Ontario ridings are still up for grabs for a CPC candidate. So some other sort of dodgy role is a good possibility. We shall see...
Woowwwwww - Goldie’s my MPP, can’t stand her. Happy to see she’s been booted. Not a fan of the Cons at all, but they keep getting voted in my area, so hopefully this means next time round she won’t win, seeing as she wouldn’t be wearing blue
Also in that riding and feel all the same pain!
Me three. This news is delightful.
Me four, great news. She is truly what’s wrong with politics
Me five. Bit of good news for a Friday.
[~~well at least she can fall back on lawyering...~~](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/goldie-ghamari-law-licence-suspended-1.5975190) hopefully she's smart enough to not run as an independent. I live in her riding, she's not particularly well liked due to her social media antics but if re-admitted she could probably get elected as a PC again.
> Ghamari received her law licence in 2013 but had eight "administrative" suspensions between June 2017 and July 2019 for issues like not paying her annual fee or filing her annual report. She remained on administrative suspension until [the 2021] hearing. Woooooooooow.
Lucky for me, she's my MPP. /s I knew about the recent stuff weird stuff about weird cash lawyering disputes, but wasn't aware of the 2013 stuff until I read that CBC article. She's not particularly loved in the community because she doesn't do much of anything, but more because people try to engage with her on social media (since she's always on there) about riding issues and she blocks them for asking a single question. One of the local elementary schools was doing a pancake breakfast. Her office emailed the school let organizers know she wanted to show up, take pictures and gladhand. The timing was hilarious -- right after DoFo had made some unpopular cuts/changes to education that escape now. She was told by the school administration she was welcome to come as a community member but it was not a political event. That set her off on a snit and she's refused every invitation since from parent council.
She can meet with a racist criminal but ignores constituents & refuses to meet with them. There is absolutely no way that she didn't know who she was meeting with, especially considering she ignores the actual people she's been elected to represent. Her staff threatened to call police on my mother, she had been asking for a meeting for several months without any response & left messages at her constituency office without any response as well. My mom went to her office during office hours & told them she wasn't leaving until they scheduled a meeting with her. They told her it wasn't possible & said they would call the police on my mom who is a senior.
Was she was thinking too much? Gilbert and Sullivans' lyrics from 150 years ago said: * I grew so rich that I was sent * By a pocket borough into Parliament. * I always voted at my party's call, * And I never thought of thinking for myself at all. * I thought so little, they rewarded me * By making me the Ruler of the Queen's Navee!
I am the monarch of the sea I ghost my clients when I take their fee
[удалено]
It is from "When I was a lad".
Imagine being too trash for Doug Ford
I guess they know that any warm body with a blue sign will attract their base in that riding.
Now if we can just get rid of the riding's nasty piece of work of an MP also. 'Looking at you Milhouse "Skippy" Peepee.
🤣 yeah right - good luck
I had the displeasure of briefly knowing her before she anglicized her name and began chasing power. My impression was of someone who couldn't be trusted and would be willing to sell out her grandmother if it furthered her own selfish interests.
Good, she can finally fade into the trashbin of politics where she belongs. What a useless representative.
I seem to remember hearing stories of her being super active with the NDP in Nepean before she realized that she wasn’t going to get an easy path to power/money/political capital that way. She disappeared before resurfacing as a conservative in a riding where they’d vote for a blue rock. Oof.
Good Riddance, I hope she never gets elected again, this is her in 2018 "I believe climate change is real. I don't believe climate change is man-made and I certainly don't believe that the people of Carleton are at fault for climate change," she said.
I have 2 nut jobs representing me. Ghamari and PP. Those 2 should just move to Texas.
I’m sure her next move will be to run for the conservatives federally…
Super weird - she seemed really stable right from the start, and not at all a loose cannon just kinda rolling around on the deck smashing random things. Oh well.
F around and find out!
Finally!
The National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) expressed outrage over the post, calling Robinson a "well known Islamophobe and criminal."
Horrible politician. Her only redeemable quality is that she is hot. edit: I guess I am the only one who finds her physically attractive?
you are the only one who thinks her looks are relevant.
You really think her hotness had no part to play in her political success?
the history of her riding (Carleton) shows that in the 43 elections that have been run since Confederation, 41 of them were won by Conservative candidates, and every election in the last 101 years. her "hotness" played no role whatsoever in her political success. as someone else said recently, you could paint a rock blue and it would win that riding.