I am not actively following Canadian politics, but recently Reddit swarms me with media/videos about Canada, with the kind of rhetoric I know from right winged people in Germany (AfD, CDU).
They are blaming Trudeau and immigration for everything that happens in Canada currently. Calling immigrants terrorists etc.
I always had to imagine in my head, that Canadians are friendly, open-minded people, but the media suggest otherwise.
So dear people, enlighten me with your opinion please!
The right are overrepresented online due to foreign influence campaigns
I think you give foreign actors too much credit. Canada’s got plenty of gullible right wing idiots on its own.
Are there sections of Canada that are overly right leaning? Kinda like Texas or Florida of the USA?
Alberta is the Canadian Texas/Florida unfortunately. The two large cities vote left, but the rural / agricultural voting block outweighs them, so the provincial government has been right wing for decades. With one exception in recent years there was a Premier that was so insufferable and corrupt that in protest an NDP government was elected but that was just a one shot.
This is partly false. Edmonton and Calgary vote blue federal and usually orange for provincial. Results from the last federal election https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6183209
Provincial - https://globalnews.ca/news/9633315/live-alberta-election-results-2023-vote/
Which I think has a lot to do with union and provincial government employees. But I’m just another stupid Albertan.
Orange = NDP = left. I was talking about the provincial government and premier
Right. That’s why I said partly false. Perhaps, “not the whole truth” would be better working? By stating the cities vote left and leaving it at that implies they always vote left, when they don’t. All I was saying. Thanks.
Yeah, the CBC video comment sections. b’dum-tss
foreigndomestic influence campaignsCanada Proud, NatPo and Post Media in general, etc.
NatPo is a foreign influencer - they’re no longer domestically owned.
Do you mean this - “… Chatham Asset Management LLC is an American hedge fund…”?
Yuppers
TIL. I thought PostMedia is an all-Canadian propi.
A lot of is anti-Trudeau sentiment. Trudeau has been power a long time and people are getting sick of him. Trudeau has preached about helping people however has shown at times, they only care about their rich friends.
However there is a lot of push from right wing disinformation groups (sex ed is bad, LGBT are bad, immigrants are bad, etc).
There has been a cost of living crisis/housing crisis which allows bad faith actors to push the narrative that it’s specific out groups are to blame instead of government policy of allowing the rich to loot the country.
There has been a cost of living crisis/housing crisis which allows bad faith actors to push the narrative that it’s specific out groups are to blame instead of government policy of allowing the rich to loot the country.
And even then, most other developed countries are having similar issues in the years post-covid (and the disruptions that accompanied it).
And don’t forget him breaking one of his biggest election promises of electoral reform, which has not helped him among left-leaning voters.
So much this! After Harper I was hopeful about doing something about this mess before it got worse. Then nothing. I think a bill was presented at one point? Maybe? •sigh•
r/metaCanada was super right wing, honestly I think r/Canada had some of the same tendencies and moderation, making them right wing, them being a default canada sub is silly to me, but I’m not on reddit anymore so whatever. r/Onguardforthee was Canada’s more leftwing subreddit, closer to Lemmy’s !Canada@lemmy.ca
In real life Canada, provinces of BC, ON, QC and some of the maritimes lean left generally, SK, AB lean right (like the Montana and Texas of Canada). Cities lean a lot more left but outlying suburbs tend to lean right.
Toronto and Vancouver have let in lots and lots of immigrants and refugees (about the same as the US despite being 1/10th the size), which is great but it does put pressure on housing, wages and other supports. The problems are more a failure of housing policy and use of Temporary Foreign Worker plan to intentionally pay Canadians less, than it is the fault of the immigrants.
We are culturally diverse, yet there are some voices from people including those who are first or second generation immigrants that oppose immigration (pulling up the ladder behind them). Now there are some aspects of foreign culture I don’t wish to import that immigrants will need to discard (caste discrimination for example) but in other respects, diversity is our strength and it’s what makes us Canada. Not the colour of our skin.
r/Canada is quite left leaning from my observations, mods included.
How long has it been since you visited? Idk what happened but over the last few years it’s gone heavily to the right
Not much the last couple of years. I try to avoid places that tend to demand polarization in thought.
r/canada is a complete and utter shithole, don’t base your opinion of Canada off that sub cause I’d be shocked if more than a 1/3rd of regular commenters/posters are actually Canadian. Unpopular opinion on Lemmy, but I still use reddit daily on my pc so I can block ads and use RES with old reddit. 99% of the time I just browse by my subscribed subs which are all niche stuff that hasn’t yet made its way to Lemmy, but when I do dare to venture to r/all, I can feel my brain cells committing suicide.
Anyways, I’ve been subbed to r/canada since 2015 when I first started using that website and the massive increase in right wing propaganda is very noticeable. If a non-Canadian looked at that sub, they’d think Canada was a mostly right leaning country, when the opposite is true. If the left vote wasn’t split between people holding their noses and voting for the Liberals, and those voting for the NDP (my preferred party for 14 years now) then the tories would never win another election for a long time.
I’m 30 and born and raised in Canada. I can count the amount of right-wingers I’ve met on 2 hands. Most people I’ve met are friendly and accepting of people, although the rise in brainwashing from “conspiracies” is sadly increasing the amount of right-wingers. It also doesn’t help that the TFW (temporary foreign worker) program is being abused to fucking hell by shitty, greedy corporations and that’s starting to slowly turn people against immigrants. Even as a very left wing person, I’m getting annoyed at how many companies exclusively hire TFW’s in jobs that used to go to high school kids and young people in general. Why hire a teen that has a complicated schedule with school and just generally being a teen, when you can hire a TFW that depends on your pathetically small pay cheque to make ends meet?
I’ve been working with immigrants since I got my first job 17 years ago, and I can count on one hand the amount of shitty immigrants I’ve met. There are far more “natural born” assholes than there are immigrants, it’s not even a comparison. 99% of the immigrants I’ve met are awesome and hard working people that Canada is lucky to have. But companies are 100% abusing the shit out of it to suppress wages, and landlords are absolutely loving the shortage of housing due to our insane population growth. My rent went from $1800 a month in 2017 for a decent, well maintained 3 bedroom in a nice neighbourhood, to $2800 in 2022 for a complete shithole 3 bedroom in a sketchy neighbourhood.
People are rightfully frustrated with the state of Canada, but unfortunately that leads to a lot of brain dead morons blaming immigrants rather than the government that’s happily serving the corporate and landlord classes at the working classes expense.
I know the last half of my post makes me sound like I’m against immigrants, but I’m absolutely not. Like I said, I’ve met far more shitty “natural born” Canadians than I have immigrants. I’m always happy for more good people to come to Canada and help to make our country better and more diverse. I’m just against greedy assholes abusing immigrants for profit at the expense of the common Canadian. Wages are being suppressed and rent is being artificially inflated because of the government caring more about keeping a good stock of wage slaves to support the boomers retirement. Trudeau even straight up said “house prices must remain stable” because god forbid the fucking boomers lose a bit of their net worth by reigning in housing prices.
The average Canadian is just getting bent over and fucked by the greedy owner class and I’m fucking sick of it, but the NDP have basically zero chance to win unfortunately and they’re the only ones that would actually help the average Canadian.
I haven’t used Reddit in a while, but back when I did, r/canada was alt-right and I doubt it had real Canadians on it. It seemed like a Russian troll farm like r/the_donald. The actual Canadian subreddit seemed to be r/onguardforthee. The media is also mostly privately owned by wealthy conservatives so there’s a clear bias. I personally don’t read or watch anything that isn’t put out by the CBC, which has a mandate to be politically neutral.
Even Canada’s right wing party doesn’t hate immigrants, as they make up a large part of the Canadian labour market and are a source of tax revenue. The only valid criticism has been over student visas, which were essentially temporary visas given to people with lots of money. A lot of these “students” were middle aged, already had advanced degrees, and spent more time working a high paying job, or simply just living in Canada, than attending school. The conditions of a student visa were mostly “do you have $100,000 per year?” Nobody had much reason to put a cap on it, since it was a large revenue source, but once there were over 1 million active student visas it might have attributed to actual issues. The conditions are changing and there is now going to be a cap on the amount of active student visas.
The Conservatives are blaming Trudeau for everything though. That’s definitely real. Their current leader is Pierre Poilievre who spent most of his 20 year career as an “attack dog”. I don’t think he knows how to do anything else besides trash talk people. It used to get him in a lot of trouble, but now it’s gotten him party leadership and is probably going to get him the title of Prime Minister. Not because Canadians aren’t friendly, but because this is Trudeau’s 4th election and Canadians don’t like voting for the same person 4 times in a row.
He’s also inherited irrational hatred from his father. Many 40-50 year old grew up hearing their parents bash PET like it was their full time job and religion. It became part of their fucking IDENTITY. JT could be the second coming of Jesus and the right would still gleefully desecrate his crucified corpse.
Not saying that’s the only factor but it sure made it easier to whip up the moral panic we see among some people today.
The Tories have been attacking Trudeau from the outset though, I know people from when I lived in Calgary that still blame Trudeau Sr. for a lot of their problems so Trudeau got that from the outset.
Historically we have red Tories but imo the “big tent” of the CPC is just reform 2.0 and while they’re still there (I recall Michael Chong for example being one of the few people who acknowledged climate change and had a plan in his platform when he ran for leadership) it’s still definitely reform party at its core. I had hoped the PPC would peel off the more hard-line side of the party and they could stop courting them but yeah, that didn’t happen.
We’re an exporter though of the hardliners, I brought up Harper and the IDC a while ago but I kinda forgot about the og Preston Manning who Farage in the uk modeled his recent campaign after and is an admirer of. We like to point at the states for the shift in our Tories but we’re absolutely more than capable of trailblazing ourselves…
In terms of social values left. Even the last conservative prime minister was smart enough to keep his opinions to himself and not try to push evangelical policies, he knew he would lose.
In terms of economics… well the average person globally doesn’t know the difference between monatary policy, fiscal policy, and their own asshole. Currently Canadians are being promised a magical fix all solution with absolutely no details, but they sure are angry that things are expensive, so at the moment right.
Well put. A lot of people also seem to think the government can magically make money appear out of nowhere and give them better services while taxing them less and somehow still balancing the budget.
They could be forgiven for thinking that since fiat currency is magically made to appear out of nowhere. The government can create as much currency as it wants. The reason it doesn’t is because it devalues existing currency, and so it effectively serves as a tax on people who hoarde money. Boo hoo. My heart bleeds.
Just to be clear to everyone, there are literal Neo-Nazi mods of /r/Canada..
IMHO Canadians are not significantly friendlier than most nationalities. At most they are friendlier than the average big-city dwelling Americans, and that’s where the meme came from. Up until a few years ago Canada was a country of small cities, and these comparisons are all inherently flawed given the myriad of factors involved.
There is a LOT of conservatism brewing in Canada, and this hasn’t much to do with friendliness. Some of the most astoundingly friendly people I’ve met were midwesterner Americans… and these same people were very bigoted in some regards. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing.
Of course there’s a theme, and big truck jackasses playing heavy metal with “Fuck Trudeau” & MAGA stickers abound. But visit an assembly from any affluent neighbourhood residents association and you will see highly educated and courteous old ladies parrot genocidal talking points.
At most they are friendlier than the average big-city dwelling Americans, and that’s where the meme came from.
Haha, that could be true.
It’s not just right wing criticizing our immigration policies right now. It’s basically every single person.
Except the criticism is quite different from the different sides. For example simple bigotry vs arguments about the abuse of the TFW program.
Canadians tend to watch a lot of television from the USA. As the country lost its connections to the British it became more easily influenced by the Americans. For now I think a majority are still relatively sane, but there’s probably a solid 20% who are hoping that our next president will be Donald Trump.
I don’t think 20% of the populace hope DJT is our next president, but I sure as hell believe 20% of people looking to elect Poilievre hope he mimics his policies when he becomes PM.
Look at the recent poll that tested Canadian opinions of Trump. Nearly half of conservatives had a positive opinion and thought he’d be good for Canada. This puts the number at 15-20% of Canadians.
It will never cease to amaze me that anyone supports that clown. Even if you agree with his politics, he’s such an absolute garbage fire in everything he does I can’t imagine anyone electing him over a competent option.
It’s like electing the village clown because you like his stance on abortion.
As the country lost its connections to the British it became more easily influenced by the Americans.
Not very often I see someone characterizing the British as the good guys.
Males worldwide are swinging hard to the right. It’s concerning.
Macho hyper masculinity and nationalism supplanting education will do that :(
I don’t have the time to reply to all your answers…, But I am very thankful for your replies.
I didn’t know that /r/Canada really was just a bad example.
