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
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.
foreigndomestic influence campaigns
Canada Proud, NatPo and Post Media in general, etc.
Do you mean this - “… Chatham Asset Management LLC is an American hedge fund…”?
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.
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.
How long has it been since you visited? Idk what happened but over the last few years it’s gone heavily to the right
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…
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.
You need to get out of your bubble of you think /r/onguardforthee is more representative of the Canadian population than /r/canada, and if you think /r/canada is alt-right.
I personally don’t read or watch anything that isn’t put out by the CBC, which has a mandate to be politically neutral.
That may be an official mandate, but it definitely not followed. Prime example is when sued the CPC during the election (which eventually was tossed by a judge). How many times have they sued other political parties during elections?
Other parties dont send robocalls pretending to be other parties.
But the CPC does.
Other parties dont gut the oversight board and replace it with industry lobbyists, but the CPC does.
Other parties dont steal from the G7 security budget when its in Canada, but the CPC does.
Other parties dont sell off critical infrastructure like Coast guard facilities or harbour control facilities, but rhe CPC does.
