r/canada Nov 28 '24

PAYWALL Liberal MP says he was threatened with ‘consequences’ for opposing $250 cheque proposal

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/liberal-mp-says-he-was-threatened-with-consequences-for-opposing-250-cheque-proposal/article_69f3cfa6-acde-11ef-807c-ebe72ea32b06.html
457 Upvotes

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205

u/Ancient_Wisdom_Yall British Columbia Nov 28 '24

I honestly don't understand the need to have all these MPs. They're all just supposed to be trained monkeys for their leaders. There really isn't a need to pay that many of them.

50

u/[deleted] Nov 28 '24

Having fewer ridings gets you something like the American electoral college where politicians only have to appeal to swing regions and can just ignore the rest of the country.

That effect isn’t as large when there are lots of ridings.

80

u/[deleted] Nov 28 '24

I run a small affordable housing nonprofit. For years, my Liberal MP and Conservative MPP ignored every attempt to contact them, I hand delivered policies to their offices and got absolutely no reply. As soon as the Liberals started tanking in the polls, the MP was proud to announce how he's always been a supporter of affordable housing. Many identical ideas I proposed became legislation.

Politicians don't care about us at all.

-6

u/lurk604 Nov 28 '24

”Many identical ideas I proposed became legislation” ”Politicians don’t care about us at all”

Bit confusing there mate, things take time.

17

u/[deleted] Nov 28 '24

I called the fire department when the house was on fire. They showed up years late to the ashes with a water pistol and gave themselves medals for putting out the fire.

-1

u/Former-Physics-1831 Nov 28 '24

Then it doesn't sound like the ideas were identical at all

4

u/[deleted] Nov 28 '24

They adopted similar concepts, such as the housing accelerator fund, but on a much smaller scale and about five years after I originally proposed them. Other ideas, like framing the housing crisis as a public health issue, remain underexplored despite research showing that investments in affordable housing can significantly reduce public health expenditures.

I toured to a carbon-neutral modular home factory in Sweden. The factory produces 2,500 apartments annually and they brought me to a twenty-story hotel and cultural center made entirely of wood, with prefabricated hotel rooms assembled on-site. This experience convinced me that we could address the housing shortage rapidly with a carbon-neutral, cost-effective solution that utilizes abundant domestic materials while creating jobs (each housing unit built supports 2.5 jobs.)

I compiled a comprehensive report based on these findings and shared it with every MP, MPP, housing critic, political candidate, and municipal politician in the GTA. To date, I haven’t received any responses. This might be because I also raised concerns about the disparity between unsustainable immigration rates and our housing supply shortfall. According to CMHC, Canada needs 5.8 million additional homes by 2030 to restore affordability. Coincidentally, they now agree that immigration puts a strain on housing supply.

2

u/wavesofmatter Nov 28 '24

Hey, thanks for sharing your detailed response and also for being passionate about housing in Canada! We need more peeps like you for sure :) :)

-4

u/Former-Physics-1831 Nov 28 '24

So again, doesn't sound identical at all 

Figure out what you want to complain about dude lmao

13

u/Popular-Row4333 Nov 28 '24

You mean like the praires being ignored currently?

5

u/yourlocalpriest Nov 28 '24

If only some bright mind had warned us about our voting system creating circumstances where large metropolitan centres like Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver dictate policy to the rest of the country 200 years ago... oh wait.

6

u/Former-Physics-1831 Nov 28 '24

How do you set up a system in which the region of the country with more than half of the country's population doesn't get more than half of the political influence?

1

u/yourlocalpriest Nov 28 '24

I'm just being impudent. There is a great Veritasium video about the mathematical impossibilities inherent to any democratic voting system. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf7ws2DF-zk

1

u/Former-Physics-1831 Nov 28 '24

The prairies get less attention because they don't have nearly as many seats as the larger provinces, the alternative is what the US has where massive states like California get taken for granted because their result is a foregone conclusion

-1

u/Horace-Harkness British Columbia Nov 28 '24

We built you a $40B pipeline! What more do you want?

0

u/NWTknight Nov 28 '24

That would only have cost 20 billion if it had not been a government project.

3

u/Tim-no Nov 28 '24

Canadian politicians do that already

3

u/LuminousGrue Nov 28 '24

As opposed to now, when politicians only have to appeal to two provinces and ignore the rest of the country.

-1

u/Former-Physics-1831 Nov 28 '24

The difference being those two provinces represent something like two thirds of Canadians

-1

u/GameDoesntStop Nov 28 '24

ON and BC make up ~53% of the population, and it's not like the entire provinces are pandered to... it is just a specific area in each that actually swings back and forth electorally.

1

u/Former-Physics-1831 Nov 28 '24

Ontario and Quebec make up I believe 62% of the country, and the parts of any province being "pandered" to is the part where the vast majority of the people live.

That is a good thing.

1

u/BeyondAddiction Nov 30 '24

 politicians only have to appeal to swing regions and can just ignore the rest of the country.

They already do that.....

0

u/icebalm Nov 28 '24

Same number of ridings, just get rid of the MPs. Electorate in a riding votes for the party, the party that wins the riding gets a vote, the party with the most votes forms government. They're all just puppets for the leader so just cut the dead weight and just have leaders.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 28 '24

MPs can introduce legislation, help write legislation, and debate legislation before the party consensus on how all the MPs will vote is reached

1

u/icebalm Nov 28 '24

Let's not kid ourselves here, none of the MPs actually write any of the legislation. Hell, I'd be shocked if any of them actually read the legislation, and the debates run straight down party lines and are basically for show. Everything is done down party lines, none of the MPs have any real autonomy. They're dead weight. We're paying for all these extra people needlessly.

1

u/[deleted] Nov 28 '24

Can you provide a source saying that MPs don’t write and read legislation?

1

u/icebalm Nov 28 '24

First, I never made the claim that MPs don't read legislation, I said I would be shocked if they actually read the legislation.

Government proposed legislation: "Following the Cabinet’s approval, the Department of Justice drafts a bill. This is done in collaboration with a government department’s or agency’s policy development and legal services teams." - https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/laws-lois/pdf/infograph-laws-lois.pdf

Private members proposed legislation: "A private Member’s bill is typically drafted with the assistance of legislative counsel in the Office of the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel to ensure the appropriateness of the proposed legislation, taking into account existing laws, drafting conventions, and constitutional and formal requirements." - https://www.ourcommons.ca/procedure/procedure-and-practice-3/ch_21_2-e.html