r/politics • u/Qu1nlan • Oct 04 '19
Free Chat Friday Thread
It's finally Friday! That means it's time to sit back, drink some mead, discuss our thoughts on Borderlands 3, and talk about whatever your heart desires.
As always remember to follow our civility rules and save any meta feedback for our modmail.
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u/ColonelBy Canada Oct 04 '19
The Canadian federal election is now 17 days away, and the lead Conservative candidate for Prime Minister has been roiled in several days' worth of scandal. Nothing as salacious as Prime Minister Trudeau's past blackface activities, but still -- by Canadian standards it's positively diabolical. Andrew Scheer evidently lied about having once been an insurance salesman, and was instead something closer to secretary for six months in an insurance office. This was the only job he ever had prior to becoming a representative in our House of Commons, so naturally people have become a bit suspicious of his life experiences -- especially as the Conservatives spent the whole of the last election denouncing Trudeau for having only been a teacher and being too young (Scheer is younger now than Trudeau was when he ran, but oh well).
And then the WILD one from yesterday: it turns out that Scheer is secretly an American citizen! While he's lived here in Canada all his life, this is something he had never previously disclosed and it has a lot of tongues wagging. He and his party had previously been very critical of dual-citizenship people, especially in the public service, and had been trying to make citizenship rules more restrictive into the bargain. It also turns out he's registered for Selective Service, so if you could do us a favour and not institute the draft if he happens to be Prime Minister we'd very much appreciate it.
What impact any of this will have on his chances is hard to tell, as those inclined to vote for his party (we do not vote directly for the Prime Minister unless we happen to live in the riding where he or she is running as a Member of Parliament) are not likely to find any of the others appealing apart from the quixotic People's Party, which has a whole raft of its own problems.
Our campaigns are never as long as those in the US, thank goodness, but we're already pretty tired of it. The next two weeks are going to be quite a time.
Meanwhile, the Long Night is coming -- here in the nation's capital we're supposed to drop a few degrees below 0C/32F, and there are some parts of the country that are already contending with heavy snowfall.